


go i know not whither and fetch i know not what

by voicedimplosives



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 1990s, Alternate Universe - 1990s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood and Violence, Canonical Character Death, Chekhov's Cock, Eastern Orthodox in the Streets, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Gun Violence, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Now with 100 Percent More Banya!, Past Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Praise Kink, Rey Needs A Hug, Road Trips, Russia, Russian Mafia, Slavic Pagan in the Sheets, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-04-29 21:25:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 118,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14481504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives
Summary: The year is 1994. The Iron Curtain has come down, the oligarchs have begun their rise to power, and Kyril Ren, a powerful member of the infamous crime syndicate Solntsevskaya Bratva, has been given a job: hunt down an estranged uncle who has been snitching to the FBI.Irena, nicknamed Rey by her adoptive father Luke, is a Krav Maga instructor in New York who has finally been able to obtain her original birth certificate from Russia. Turns out she was born in a little village named Vershinino, but if she wants to know more than that… she’s going to have to go there herself.TL;DR: What up here's a Russian Mafia AU.





	1. Место где начинаются всё

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the place where everything begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I just wanted to say here at the top that while I have passing familiarity with the topics in this story (and have lived inside the former Soviet Bloc for a few years now), I am not from Russia. I did my best to research this as thoroughly as I could. I am not trying to romanticize this time in Russian history, which I know was very very difficult for its citizens, nor am I trying to glorify the Bratva who by all reports were and are some very bad dudes. I hope both those things come across in my writing. This is only meant to be a story, just a story about some lonely people living in a time period and some places that were full of 'em. I hope you enjoy, and if you do, maybe leave me some feedback? I love that kind of thing!
> 
> Last but _not_ least, big ups to my beta reader Kachenka ([vvhenan](http://vvhenan.tumblr.com)) who changed all my Russian from Google-translated pap to the real thing, and made the rest of this coherent to boot! ❤

_To believe in a thing is to give something of yourself over — and receive something in return._

_Let's say you believe in God. So you give your faith, and in return you are afforded solace, a sense of overarching purpose to the universe, a moral compass._

_Or maybe you believe in Money. So you give your time and your energy, and in return you are afforded physical comfort, power, legacy._

_Maybe, though, you're one of the reckless ones, and you give your belief to Love. So you bare your soul, hoping against hope that you will not be spurned. And perhaps you are afforded the joy of knowing what it is be loved in return._

_In Russia they say, ‘Бережёного Бог бережёт.’_

_It means, more or less, that God helps those who help themselves. The same principle applies to Money. You can believe and believe and believe until you’re grey in the face and bent in the spine but if you never once step out of your door and put your ax to the grindstone, there’s a very good chance that the thing you believe in will take more from you than you will ever receive from it._

_Love, though. There’s no logic when it comes to Love. Are you lucky? Maybe you’ll be loved. Are you unlucky? Maybe you won’t. There’s no helping it._

_There is only Hope, the cunning henchman of Belief._

 

. . .

 

“Today,” Rey says, to the motley crew of New Yorkers standing around on the squishy blue mats in the gym’s mirrored studio, “we’re going to learn how to disarm a knife-wielding attacker.”

 

From his place beside her at the head of the class, Finn gives a helpful little wave of his rubber dagger.

 

“Anyone have experience with this?” he asks.

 

Quite a few hands go up. Poe, who stands with the other students like he hasn’t been attending this class so long he could be giving it, lets out a loud snort. “It’s New York, honey,” he calls out. “They may not know how to fight back, but I guarantee you everyone in this room has had a knife pulled on ‘em.”

 

“Poe,” Finn says, shooting his boyfriend a warning glare.

 

“Hey, I’m just speaking the truth here.”

 

Rey shrugs. “He’s not wrong. But after this lesson, assuming that running away is not an option, you’ll all know _exactly_ how to fight back.”

 

With that, she and Finn turn to each other. “Let’s start with the ice pick stab,” she says. He nods, then raises the knife behind his head, holding it in a tight fist with the blade pointed towards her.

 

Rey takes a bracing breath. “Okay. _Attack_!”

 

His arm swings down, the dull tip directed at her jugular, but she raises her forearm and blocks the blow, then brings her other arm around to punch Finn’s sharp jawline. In the same breath, she uses her punching arm to grip the back of his neck and pull his torso towards her. When he’s doubled over, she yanks her leg up towards his groin in a rapid succession of knee jerks. Finn groans to simulate the pain he would be feeling, and Rey grabs the knife from his hand. She backs away while holding it out in front of her defensively.

 

The entire thing takes less than fifteen seconds.

 

“Did you get that?” she asks, her eyes sliding over her audience. She’s met by nervous silence; a lot of them gape back at her with what she thinks might be intimidation. “Right. We’ll go two more times, then it’s your turn to try.”

 

The rest of the hour continues like this, Rey and Finn demonstrating the methods for various lines of attack: straight and upward stabs, a knife to the back, to the torso, to the throat. The students practice with each other, taking turns being the assailant and the victim, while Rey circulates the room. She’s not gentle with them when their technique is wrong, she feels no compunction at telling them exactly how badly this will go if they don’t get it right.

 

Rey knows all too well about that.

 

Afterwards, as the students shout their goodbyes, some drifting out of the studio and a few loitering to chat, Finn rests his hands on her biceps. His eyes are trained on her, his expression solemn.

 

“Good class, peanut,” he says, his deep voice warm and kind as ever. “I know this one is always hard for you.”

 

Rey leans into his touch, and gives a little nod. Poe meanders over a few minutes later, pulling her into a bear hug.

 

“Drinks?” he asks.

 

“Can’t,” she says, sighing against his chest. “Going to Luke’s tonight. Rain check?”

 

“Of course. You did good today Rey. We’re so proud of you.”

 

“We’re always proud of you,” Finn adds. “Hey, can you still help out with my Thursday jiu-jitsu class? Eight o’clock. Rose’s sister Paige is in town on leave, so she asked for the night off.”

 

“You got it.” Rey wiggles out from between them to pick up her nylon duffel bag from where she dropped it by the door. “Sorry boys, I gotta hustle. Promised Luke I’d be there by nine, and you know how slow the Q runs at night.”

 

“Stay safe, give our best to the old man!” says Poe, his arms wrapped around Finn’s waist, chin resting on his shoulder. Their eyes follow her through the studio, twin concerned expressions haunting their faces.

 

“Don’t have _too_ much fun without me,” she throws over her shoulder as she heads out into the gym, a large airy loft littered with weight racks and benches. A few regulars are doing their thing, but no one pays her much mind.

 

She can’t look back at them as she leaves, not while they stand there cuddling. Not right now.

 

Poe and Finn’s love is a warm, steady constant in her life, and she’s a better person for having them around. Their love keeps her faith in the idea alive, but Rey feels like an exposed nerve at the moment, and the sight of their casual intimacy makes that raw nerve twinge like it’s being plucked.

 

She descends the stairwell then steps out into the frigid November evening. Standing in the shadows of the gym’s recessed concrete doorway and staring out at the still street, it's easier for her to let go of the memories the class has called forth. She inhales, exhales and watches the air escape her parted lips like gossamer white dragonbreath. The sweat in her hair has already begun to cool under her wool beanie, and a chill runs through her. She pulls in one more lungful of sharp winter air and does a final scan of her surroundings. Only the shuttered, graffitied storefronts and a few intrepid rats meet her gaze.

 

Rey pulls her old bomber jacket tighter around herself, then turns her feet in the direction of the Canal Street subway station.

 

All that accompanies her along the way are the piercing winds as they sweep inland from the East River, the yowling of a lone alley cat, and the thumping bass of a Depeche Mode song drifting out from a distant night club.

 

. . .

 

Rey doesn't remember much from the early years. Sometimes she dreams of a quiet forest, buried under a thick blanket of snow. In the dream she's walking barefoot, her tiny feet leaving little pockmarks in the snow’s otherwise undisturbed surface. She's following a trail of garnet-hued droplets, but she can never remember why. There's a loud crack from somewhere, like a gunshot, and it echoes through the pines. It's followed by the riotous cawing of an unkindness of ravens, flapping their gleaming black wings as they rise up above her head.

 

Then she wakes up — always just on the cusp of understanding what she's seen, but never quite getting there.

 

Once Rey was old enough to leave her first group home out on Long Island, she bounced from foster home to foster home throughout the five boroughs before finally ending up under Unkar Plutt’s roof around the age of twelve. He was mostly just negligent, with intermittent bouts of verbal abuse. But Rey gave as good as she got, and in the end she returned every hurt he bestowed upon her with interest. She tries not to think about that too much.

 

If her early years have been lost to her, she has purposefully chosen to lose the ones she spent with Plutt.

 

Most of the time, this works for her. When it doesn't, she pretends that it does.

 

She met Luke when she was fifteen — scrawny and snarling and sneaking into a run-down boxing gym out in Brighton Beach, near Unkar’s place. She’d found an old bag that lay unused, leaking sand in the gym’s service corridor, and had taken to using it as an outlet for her latent aggression. Luke had taken one look at her, shaken his head, and declared she had the worst form he’d ever seen.

 

 _“What's it to you?”_ She still cringes when she thinks about how bullishly she challenged him, and the wistful smile he gave her in response.

 

 _“I used to be the best, kid,”_ he’d said. _“Can’t stand to see you butcher the art of boxing like that.”_

 

He took her under his wing that very day, showing her how to wrap her hands and pull on her gloves. Teaching her footwork, how to throw a punch, how to take one. Boxing had never really clicked for her and in time she’d moved on — to kickboxing, muay thai, and finally, the one that had clicked— Krav Maga.

 

That was how she met Finn; his class and his friendship had literally changed the course of her life. Krav Maga became a lifeline for her; she continued attending Finn’s class even after Luke formally adopted her and she graduated high school, even after she dropped out of community college and started working at a record shop down on Houston Street, even after she knew all of the moves by heart.

 

It took him a few years, but Finn finally convinced her to move into the spare bedroom of the apartment he shared with Poe, and to start filling in for him, instructing a lesson here or there when he needed a day off.

 

One day, after a couple months of this, it dawned on Rey that she’d become Finn’s substitute whenever he was busy, which, conspicuously, seemed to be more and more often. Her name had started showing up on the hand-written schedule in the management office — and then one day, the class had been listed as hers. Later, she’d added a women’s-only section, which was so popular it snowballed into general women’s self defense courses. Then before she knew it, the dingy little gym on the Lower East Side wasn’t just her place of business, it was the epicenter of her whole life.

 

These days she lives only a couple blocks away, in a shoebox walk-up she still shares with Finn and Poe. She lives a quiet life. In the summer, when the city traps the humid heat inside its tangled maze of steel and concrete, she goes to Washington Square Park to watch the NYU kids and the grunge rockers rub elbows. In the winter, the entire populace seems to disappear inside and every day brings sleepy, grey afternoons, so she curls up in her local public library branch with a book.

 

The only time she ever really leaves Manhattan anymore is to take the Q line on the subway out to Brighton Beach, at the far southeastern end of Brooklyn, to visit Luke. She goes about once a week, and it’s almost always the same routine.

 

Luke makes borscht, which she complains about and then gorges herself on anyway. They talk about boxing, or the week’s most absurd local news stories, or what the hell this new-ish president Clinton is up to, or the actual logistics of starting a ghostbusting business. Mundane things. It’s comfortable, and in the years since their fateful first meeting he has become, for all intents and purposes, a father to Rey.

 

He’s there now when she ambles up to his house, sitting on his red brick stoop. _His teeth are chattering_ , Rey observes, with a pang of guilt.

 

“Irena. I thought we agreed on nine?” His tone is light but his tense posture speaks to his very real fear. People slip through the cracks all the time in this city; Rey herself might've been one of them, if not for Luke.

 

“Spare me your shit, Luke, my class ran late,” Rey says, gently pecking both of his cheeks.

 

“Lucky for you that my borscht is served cold,” teases Luke, before turning and climbing the steps.

 

“Ugh,” she groans theatrically, following after him.

 

. . .

 

Kyril Ren steps through the glass partition of his shower and onto the soft bath mat. He breathes in the steam-thickened air of his richly veined marble bathroom. On the far end of the room, next to the sink and counter, a floor-to-ceiling mirror covers one entire wall. Condensation fogs the surface but he gives a few rough swipes of his hand to clear it, then applies a critical eye to his body, enjoying the luxury of vanity after going so long without it.

 

His latest prison stint has done wonders for his physical condition; where once he was tall but lean, now his massive frame has filled out. His arms are corded with dense muscle. A powerful, sculpted torso tapers subtly from the broad width of his shoulders down to the defined vee of his pelvis. His cock — _nothing embarrassing there,_ he gloats — hangs thick and heavy, even while flaccid, from the thatch of dark hair at his groin. The long thighs and calves beneath it have a healthy dusting of dark hair and the same beauty marks that dot the rest of his body.

 

Kyril has never liked his face — full lips, long nose, large ears. His dark, expressive eyes — an inheritance and inescapable reminder of his mother. The features’ oversized proportions seem even more exaggerated when his wet hair is slicked down against his scalp, so he chooses to do as he’s always done, and ignore them.

 

He studies his tattoos, the requisite markings of any member of the Solntsevskaya Bratva. Kyril has earned each and every one of them — he wears them like a suit of armor on his skin and they tell his story to anyone who dares to look.

 

Starting from his legs, where two eight-pointed stars decorate each kneecap to indicate that he kneels to no man, Kyril lets his inspection drift upwards. Covering most of his stomach and lower chest is an onion-domed orthodox church, with six bulbous spires to represent the six years he has served. Two unblinking eyes peer out from behind the church — they tell others that he is an authority, one who enforces the Ponyatiya, the thieves’ laws.

 

The two crosses on the knuckles of his right hand denote his two separate stints in the penal system, and the knife tattooed across his trapezius muscle was given after he'd killed two men from a rival gang, and one of his own who'd turned informer, while inside. It is bifurcated by the jagged scar that runs from the tear duct of his right eye, down his cheek and the column of his throat, and across his pectoral.

 

Perhaps his favorite of the bunch is the simple rose that hovers above his left nipple, near his armpit; it speaks to the fact that he turned eighteen while incarcerated. The memory of that day is bittersweet — no one wants to celebrate such a significant birthday in prison, but — it was the first, last and only time his mother Leia visited him while he was locked up.

 

The most important, however, is the eight-pointed star on the ball of his right shoulder and the diamond on the knuckle of his ring finger, within which there is an orthodox cross.

 

This is proof that he is a Vor, a thief-in-law. A made man — beloved by the Krestniy Otets, the godfather.

 

Untouchable.

 

He doesn't need to turn to know what he will find on his back — it's covered by a massive piece depicting the Madonna and child, done with care by a particularly talented fellow inmate during the long boring hours that fill up a prison term. Finally, on one shoulder blade stalks a roaring tiger, a testament to Kyril’s short fuse and tendency to take out his frustrations on the nearest authority figure.

 

This is Kyril’s story.

 

 _The only one that matters anymore,_ he tells himself. _The only one you have left._

 

Kyril is certain that someday, he will ascend from his position as Avtoritet — one of the many captains of his illicit industry — to become the next boss. This is Kyril’s destiny, it is what he has spent the last decade working towards. And one that Snoke has promised him, when the time comes.

 

 _Ven, they’re just using you._ A distant echo of his father’s voice, from a memory Kyril tries very hard not to think about.

 

“None of your business,” he says out loud to his reflection. “Rule number one: the Vori have no family.” Then he cringes, suddenly feeling ridiculous — standing here preening and talking to himself. He turns from the mirror, wrapping his waist in one of his soft Turkish cotton towels, and pads off to start his day.

 

. . .

 

“I got something in the mail today,” Rey says, once she's settled into one of the rickety chairs at Luke's kitchen table. She reaches into her duffel bag, and pulls out a large, thin envelope.

 

“It's finally arrived! This is the last of them, isn't it?”

 

She nods, giving him a small, hopeful smile. “I wanted to wait to open it with you.”

 

That brings a glow to Luke's tired face, and he grins like a fool as he places a bowl of crimson borscht in front of Rey, then a smaller bowl of sour cream beside it.

 

“Well then,” he says, sitting down across from her with his own bowl. “The big reveal. Nervous? Excited?”

 

“No, I just—I don’t know. I’m halfway hoping the clerks at, um, Arkhangelsk Oblast have sent me another rejection letter. I don’t even know what I’ll do if they’ve sent me a birth certificate, y’know?”

 

Luke takes hold of her hand, giving it a firm squeeze. “We’ll figure it out, Rey.”

 

She manages another small smile.

 

It’s been a long road to get this envelope. When she finally decided she was ready to start hunting down her parents, after turning twenty one on the day that the state of New York had designated as her birthday, she’d started by visiting the last of her case workers. That woman had been able to provide her with an address out in Queens — her very first group home — only the house had been boarded up once she’d found it. What had followed was weeks of jumping through hoops and wading through red tape as Rey shlepped from one administrative office to another on her days off, trying to trace the haphazard path of her life back to its origins. And the end result?

 

Her mother had sought and received asylum from the Soviet Union. She was a refugee, as was Rey. Apparently she’d arrived at the group home with an infant Rey, where she’d died not long after of natural causes, in 1974. If Rey wanted a birth certificate, she'd been told, she’d have to personally write a request to each and every oblast, or district, of the newly christened Russian Federation. Which she’d done, of course. With a translation attached, thanks to one of her students.

 

What else could she do? She’d come too far at that point to give up. In the six months since then, she’s received letter after letter from each and every oblast telling her they have no record of her or her mother.

 

Except for Arkhangelsk.

 

This is the last of them, and if there is no tangible evidence of her existence in this envelope — Rey stops to consider this for a moment, her hand frozen on the glued fold.

 

If there is no record of her birth in the former USSR and no record of her birth in America, then she has been right in her darkest and ugliest suspicions all these years. She truly _is_ no one, from nowhere.

 

The seal on the envelope gives way, and Rey pulls out the single thin piece of paper within. Her heart rate skyrockets at the sight of it. It’s written in Russian, in Cyrillic script, and, she can’t read a word of it, but it is undoubtedly a formal state document.

 

“It’s—” she murmurs, then stops. There seems to be something clogging her throat, and her vision has gone blurry.

 

“Our little archangel.” Luke’s voice is soft, with only a hint of jest. She looks up at him — his eyes are overbright, tears threatening to spill over.

 

“I can’t—I can’t read this,” she sputters. “I want to know where I’m from and I can’t _read_ this!”

 

Luke holds out his open hand and directs, “Give it here.”

 

“Y—you? You can—”

 

“Remember that sister I told you about? The diplomat who went to Moscow, married a local, and never came back? Pretty batty if you ask me, but hey. Love makes fools of us all.”

 

Rey tilts her head, trying to work out the connection. “So—you—know Russian? Because of, uh, Leia, was it?”

 

He chuckles. “Yes. I had this odd notion I might go visit her some day, although—that didn’t work out. In any case, I got my killer borscht recipe out of my brief period of study. And I should at _least_ be able to decipher a birth certificate.”

 

“Oh—kay,” Rey drawls, and hands it over. She gnaws at a frayed cuticle while Luke pulls a pair of scratched reading glasses from his cardigan pocket.

 

“Alright, let’s see. Your birth name is Irena Imyarek. Huh, that’s interes—”

 

“What?” Rey blurts out. “What, tell me? Come on Luke, I’m dying here.”

 

“Okay, okay. Look. Russians usually get a middle name that is a, well, an altered version of their father’s first name. A patronym. But you—you don’t have one. Just one last name, and if my memory serves correct, uh, Imyarek—it’s the word they use as a placeholder. Think, ‘Jane Doe.’”

 

She heaves a frustrated huff. “You have _got_ to be kidding me. So even in Russia, where I was fucking born, I’m just a giant question mark? Do you think my mother lied on my birth certificate?”

 

“Language, kiddo,” Luke scolds absently. Rey twists her neck to stare at his dusty collection of boxing trophies and tries very hard not to cry.

 

“And I don't know. But here’s something.” He taps on the table to bring her attention back to him. “You were born in the village of Vershinino, on the second of June in 1971. Look at that, huh? Rey, you have a birthday. And a hometown. You're a twenty two year old Russian. Officially.”

 

She’s crying now, she can’t help it. Even this pathetic scrap of information, after so many years of nothing, all her endless yearning—

 

Luke’s arms are suddenly around her, he’s kneeling beside her chair and hugging her tightly. His calloused hands stroke her hair and Rey lets herself lower the wall she keeps so carefully vaulted around her heart. Just for a minute, because it's Luke, and there's no one she trusts more. Luke murmurs soft kind words in her ear as she sobs, then wanders off once her tears begin to subside. He returns with a tissue.

 

While Rey is noisily blowing her nose and pretending to dig into her soup, feeling self-conscious about her outburst, Luke watches her. She can feel his eyes on her as she attempts to choke down a frigid spoonful.

 

“Rey—” he begins, then waits for her to look at him.

 

Rey hazards a glance, but she can’t stand what she sees there. She doesn’t want Luke’s pity, she never has.

 

“I have some money saved up.” He’s gone quiet again, serious. “I think you should have it, and take yourself on a pilgrimage to the motherland. Find this—uh, _Vershinino_ —place, hire a translator, see if you can’t find someone who knew your mother.”

 

“I can’t,” she chokes out. “I can’t take your money, Luke.”

 

“Why not? I’m not doing anything with it,” he says, making a sweeping gesture to the shabby contents of his house. “And besides—consider it a birthday present. Now that we know the exact date of yours—”

 

He pauses again, nudging her foot under the table until he has her attention.

 

“We have a lot of catching up to do,” concludes Luke, with a serene smile.

 

. . .

 

“Well, if it isn’t the golden boy, returned from exile,” sneers Hux, when he and Kyril arrive simultaneously at the neon-lit door of the Solntsevo district’s premiere gentlemen's club. “The man with no patronym, prodigal son of no one.”

 

“Fuck off,” he grunts.

 

“Touchy, touchy. What crawled up your ass and died?”

 

Kyril ignores him. He turns and stalks through the entrance of the hazy club, clouded by whirling cigarette smoke cast in neon blues and pinks. On the room’s central stage, several naked girls writhe and spin round their brass poles, and the heavy beat of East German house music makes the walls throb, but Kyril ignores all of that too. He stops at the bar, where his drink of choice sits waiting for him — vodka, neat — then moves further into the club, towards a cordoned-off booth at the back.

 

Snoke is already there, lounging on the polyester seat and fiddling with the hair of a nervous-looking girl clad in red silk lingerie. When he sees Kyril, he gives her a pat on the hip and jerks his head, dismissing her.

 

“Kyril, my boy,” he growls, and his disfigured grey face is rendered ghoulish by a leering smile. “Happy new year. Prison suits you. Four years on the inside and you look like you spent them at a spa. It's been, how long? One month, since you got out? And what do you think of this glorious capitalist paradise that you've returned to, hmm?”

 

“It's excellent,” Kyril says. He slides into the booth and glares at Hux, who has trailed in behind him and seated himself next to Snoke.

 

Artem Bogdanovich Hux has been a thorn in Kyril's side since they were both shestyorkin, delinquent errand boys trying to climb their way up the trash heap. He's never missed an opportunity to fuck Kyril over, if he thinks he spots a weakness.

_Like a shark_ , Kyril muses. _Always sniffing around for blood in the water._

 

“Good, good,” Snoke says, clearly enjoying the bristling animosity between the two men.

 

No one is exactly sure where Ivan Ivanovich Snoke comes from, and the Otets Krestniy, godfather to them all, does his best to perpetuate every outlandish rumor about his origins. What is _not_ rumor nor myth are his ruthless business tactics. In the wild year and change since the West has reopened its doors to Russia, Snoke has eliminated most traces of competition in racketeering, gambling, prostitution, and arms trafficking. He’s got every important politician either in his pocket or terrified of him. Even in prison, they spoke in hushed whispers about Snoke's bloody power grab.

 

There were once many gangs in Moscow, grappling for supremacy like a pit full of angry vipers.

 

Now there is only the Solntsevskaya Bratva.

 

The others have fled to more provincial cities, but Snoke has begun sending shestyorkin and bratok, lower-ranking members, to edge in on that territory as well.

 

 _One day we will_ own _all of Russia,_ Kyril thinks, studying the deep fissures that spider across Snoke’s face. _And I will shape it into the great nation it should have always been._

 

“I’m ready to get back to work,” he adds, when he realizes Snoke is studying him in turn.

 

Hux snorts. Under his breath he mutters, “It’s about time—”

 

“Is there something you’d like to say to me, _Artem_?” Kyril snarls.

 

“Enough, both of you. I’m glad to hear that, Ren, because I’ve got a job for you. Two, actually. But first — what the _fuck_ are you wearing?”

 

Kyril glances at one of the club’s many mirrored surfaces, smoothing his hands down the front of his bright red polyester tracksuit.

 

He shrugs. “Adidas. It’s fashionable. I saw it in the music videos.”

 

“You look like a horse’s ass and a gopnik,” Snoke jeers, and Hux snickers. “After we're finished here you're taking a trip to my tailor. You're an avtoritet, Ren. Dress like it.”

 

After a sullen nod from Kyril, Snoke continues. “So, the first job. Luke. When was the last time you heard from him?”

 

Kyril jolts. Of all the topics he would have expected Snoke to broach for their first meeting in four years, his estranged uncle is not one.

 

“Years,” he says. “Not since I was at boarding school in Berlin.”

 

“There have been rumors about him recently, you know,” Hux says, smirking. “People say he's been talking to the FBI.”

 

Now it is Kyril’s turn to snort. “About what? The man's never even _been_ to the USSR.”

 

“We are _Russia_ again, Kyril. Don't forget that,” scolds Snoke.

 

“Maybe he's been talking to your distinguished mother. Who's been talking to _you_ ,” Hux insinuates.

 

“I've been in prison, idiot, what would I have told her?”

 

“I wouldn't put anything past you, bastard.”

 

Kyril jumps to his feet, blood pounding in his ears.

 

“Fight nice boys,” croons Snoke. “And sit down, Ren. We're almost finished doctoring up a passport for you, and when it's ready, you're going to take a little trip to New York and _visit_ your uncle. While you're waiting for that, I'd like you to go for a drive up to Vologda. You'll be overseeing a deal with some Hungarians. You know how they can be.”

 

Ren sits, and takes a sip of his vodka. His rage has left him short of breath and there's a curious tunnel-like darkness at the edges of his vision. He gives a distracted nod to Snoke, never taking his eyes off of Hux.

 

“Good. You'll want to get going if you're going to see my tailor today. Congratulations on surviving prison again, my boy.”

 

It's clearly a dismissal, but Kyril is displeased to see that Hux makes no move to leave. This means Snoke has business to discuss with his red-headed rival that he does not want Kyril to hear — a worrying development.

 

He gives another nod, and pushes himself up out of the booth. As he’s walking away, he hears Snoke call out to him—

 

“Oh and Kyril, after you take off that ridiculous garment? Fucking _burn_ it.”

 

He's too humiliated to turn back, so he doesn't. He just barrels out of the club and into his Mercedes, Hux’s snide laughter chasing after him. It's only in the safety of his car, once he's on the road, that he gives voice to his indignation, releasing a furious bellow and pummeling his steering wheel.

 

. . .

 

Rey feels nothing but excitement about her first time traveling internationally — that she can remember, anyway — until the moment she steps out of the airport.

 

Excitement — when she sits down in the travel agency, and the agent gets on the phone with the airline. Excitement— when she gives the woman a full name, _her_ full name, for the ticket. When she splurges on a new pair of wool socks and long underwear, when she packs all of her warmest clothes in her canvas backpack, when Poe and Finn throw her a going-away party in their apartment, when Luke comes with her in the taxi to LaGuardia, when he hugs her at the gate and hands her a stack of traveler’s checks.

 

During the hours and hours she spends staring out the plane’s window, only the deep black night to look at but still — the ocean is somewhere beneath her. To Rey, that feels like a miracle. And she’s taken this flight before, she must have, but she has no memory of it and this is all so _new_.

 

The excitement even holds out while she waits in the interminable line for immigration, where her birth certificate and visa are checked and she is welcomed into the country with a raised eyebrow and a thickly accented ' _welcome back_ ’ from the customs agent.

 

And then — she steps out the glass doors of Sheremetyevo International Airport, and is greeted by six inches of snow, howling winds; there’s not a trace of English in sight. Rey hitches her backpack up, and begins to march through the blizzard, trying to find a bus stop. She’s armed with a map of Moscow, she’s written down her destination — a car rental company in the city center — she can do this.

 

“It’s no good,” says a voice, after Rey has been staring at the airport bus stop’s byzantine timetable for five excruciating minutes.

 

“What?” she barks. She turns to see an older man, his grizzled face alight with sardonic amusement, leaning against a massive, boat-like car that has a bright yellow TAXI sign atop it.

 

“No buses,” he says, “because of the new year.”

 

Rey tries to process that. “What are you talking about? It's the middle of January.”

 

The man laughs and shakes his head. “First time in Russia, huh, girlie? Where you want to go?”

 

Rey hesitates, peers through the snow in search for an alternative to this man who her well-honed instincts are screaming at her to avoid. There's no one around, and as the biting wind picks up, her leather bomber jacket feels like it's made of crepe paper. The snow has already seeped through her Doc Martens and wool socks — her frozen toes are beginning to go numb.

 

“I'm going to this address,” she tells him, relenting, and hands him the slip of paper with the jotted down details of the car rental place.

 

Another laugh. “They're no good, they'll overcharge you. Don't worry, I'll take you to an honest place. They give you a good car, for a good price. Jump in.”

 

Rey looks around, desperate for another option. There isn't one. “Th—thanks, I guess. What do I call you?”

 

He opens the back door, and tips his jauntily placed fur cap.

 

“You can call me DJ,” he says, as Rey deposits herself onto the leather bench seat.

 

He leans down to grin at her, and Rey's heart sinks into her stomach. She knows that look, has seen it plenty of times before in sketchy bars and rough neighborhoods. On the face of Unkar Plutt, on men who stand too close on the subway, on dark figures who try to follow her home from the gym.

 

It's the sharp, knowing grin of a predator.

 

. . .

 

Hours after Kyril has left the tailor with a promise that his new suits will be ready by tomorrow, he is still driving aimlessly around Moscow.

 

At some point, he finds himself in a dreary suburb where the concrete Khrushchyovka apartment buildings, constructed less than fifty years ago, have already begun to crumble and sag.

 

He drives and drives, and when he emerges from the rage-fueled fugue state that has ensnared him, Kyril realizes he is in the neighborhood where his father grew up.

 

 _I killed you_ , he thinks, as he arrives at a nondescript block. Han’s childhood home, he knows, is inside. An apartment Han shared with his parents and two other families, noble little Soviets shoved in together like sardines, feeling cramped and comforted at the same time. Kyril knows this because Han used to drive him out here, to remind young Ben how lucky he was. _I killed you because Snoke demanded it of me. Because you were a traitor to my cause, and the Vori have no allegiances except to the Bratva._

 

 _You are Veniamin Hanovich Solo_ — the faint memory of his father’s last words reminds him. _You are my son, and you always will be._

 

For his act of patricide, a cardinal sin, he was rewarded with the status of Vor.

 

 _Was it worth it?_ He contemplates this, as he stares at the weathered building. _Was it a fair trade?_

 

The building offers no answers, he has none of his own, and the snow is picking up, so with a heavy sigh and one last glance at his father's former home, he starts up the Mercedes and heads back to his own.

 

. . .

 

Rey glances out the hotel room window to check on her ancient Moskvitch 412 — a boxy little Soviet sedan. She's parked it curbside in front of the hotel and she groans when she sees that its rusted sides are half-buried in the snow drifts piling up around it, its bald wheels completely hidden.

 

She's been had, and she knows it. The employees at the agency where Dj brought her laughed at the sight of her, laughed when she tried to speak to them, laughed when DJ leaned over the counter and said something to them in a sly tone. Laughed when they handed her a set of keys, took one of her traveler’s checks, and led her out to the clunker-filled parking lot. Laughed when they brought her to this tiny, orange car, and while they explained the controls to her by way of pantomime.

 

 _They're probably still laughing now,_ she thinks, as she watches night descend on the empty streets of Moscow.

 

_Was this a mistake? Dear God if you're listening to me, if you've ever listened to me, please don't let this have been a mistake._

 

She turns back to her icebox of a hotel room. A loaf of brown bread and a bottle of dark beer she purchased from the only open market she could find sit waiting on the lumpy bed.

 

 _Tomorrow will be better_ , she tells herself. _Tomorrow I'll head for Arkhangelsk._

 

. . .

 

The next day is not better. It dawns clear but cold, yet by late morning the streets are slick with the melted snow. She makes it about ten miles out of Moscow on the M8, or Yaroslavskoe Shosse highway — the passing landscape transformed from concrete wasteland to deep forest within minutes — when the Moskvitch stalls out. She pulls to the side of the road and turns the engine over again and again in the frantic hope that if she just _wants_ it bad enough, the car will start up.

 

It does not.

 

Finally, Rey gives up and gets out, slamming the heavy door behind her.

 

 _This was a mistake,_ she admits to herself at last, blinking back the tell-tale pricking at her eyes. There's nothing but silent, snowy evergreens in every direction, not a single other car on the road.

 

Angrily, she wipes the tears from her cheeks, and circles around to the front of the car. She pulls the hood up, and stares down at the engine.

 

Rey is a New Yorker. She's spent most of her life riding the subway or the bus. But she knows how to drive and repair basic problems on Luke's station wagon. Surely this can't be that different?

 

With a heavy sigh, she ducks her head under the hood, and begins to dig around.

 

. . .

 

Kyril drives up the Yaroslavskoe Shosse highway at a speed that far exceeds the legal limit. He's dressed in one of his new suits, a slim-cut all black affair, with tie and shirt to match. His fingers tap against the wheel in time with the catchy Ukrainian pop song playing on the radio.

 

He's lost in thought, considering the logistics of his meeting with the Hungarians, and his imminent voyage to America. It will be his first time leaving Russian soil since he dropped out of his German boarding school, back when he was still a boy. When his mother still hoped that he would escape the Soviet Union, and join his uncle in New York.

 

 _Looks like you'll be getting your wish after all, mamushka,_ he thinks, then grins despite himself. His mother never liked it when he and Han spoke Russian to her at home. _In our house_ , she'd say, _I'm the tsarina. And I say we speak English._

 

Kyril's so lost in his thoughts that he almost drives past the parked orange Moskvitch without notice. It is only when he looks in his rear view mirror a few seconds later that he processes what he's seeing. At the sight of a pair of slender, jean-clad legs attached to a cute little popka, he downshifts gears, then brings the car to a complete stop. There's no one else on the two-lane highway, so he's not worried about an accident when he throws the car into reverse and rolls backwards until he's idling alongside the Moskvitch and that _ass_.

 

The Vori code very explicitly forbids marriages, and it implicitly forbids serious romantic entanglements. Kyril, like most bratok, has slaked his urges over the years with meaningless, fleeting encounters. As he moved through his twenties and into his thirties, these trysts have offered diminishing returns for him, and before he was put away, he was practically abstinent.

 

But he has spent the last four years and one month in _actual_ abstinence. And that is a _very_ nice ass.

 

So he parks the car, rolls down the window, leans over, and calls out, “Здравствуй принцесса, у тебя есть проблема?”

 

She pulls back from under the hood and straightens. She's tall for a woman, and although he can't see much of her body above the waist, obscured as it is by her bulky leather jacket, her pretty face — anxious, wary but staring back at him boldly — takes his breath away.

 

She looks like Vasilisa the Beautiful, the heroine of an old folktale Han used to tell him at bedtime. Lost in the forest, pure of heart — afraid, but still clear-eyed, and brave. So brave.

 

 _Are you lost, little lamb?_ Kyril wonders, staring into those shining hazel eyes. _Don't be afraid. I'll take good care of you._

. . .

 

Rey hears the car roaring up the lonely highway, but it whizzes past so quickly she doesn't bother to look up from her study of the Soviet engine. She's absorbed in solving this puzzle, anyway. So absorbed that she doesn't hear the car return until a deep voice calls out to her in Russian.

 

 _Did he just call me a princess?_ She pops her head up. Beside her car there is a very expensive-looking Mercedes. The passenger window is down, and a dark-haired man is staring at her. He's wearing all black, and his unconventional features — angular face, lush mouth, strong beak of a nose — are slightly marred by the deep scar the runs across his right cheek and down under his collar. He looks... dangerous.

 

 _Fuck, he’s hot._ That's her first reaction and she immediately cringes at how weirdly inappropriate that seems.

 

He's waiting for an answer, his dark eyes burning a hole through her jacket, through her knobby wool sweater, through her very flesh, igniting a simmering heat in her gut.

 

“Uh, sorry,” she hears herself say in a thin, shaky voice. “Do you speak English?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you like me and you love doing research? If you are, have I got some links for you!
> 
> [Here is the folk tale whose name I borrowed for this story.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_I_Know_Not_Whither_and_Fetch_I_Know_Not_What) And [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasilisa_the_Beautiful) is the tale of Vasilisa the Beautiful.
> 
> Some [info](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_mafia) about Russian crime, about [the Vori](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief_in_law) and their [tattoos](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_criminal_tattoos), the [Solntsevskaya Bratva](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solntsevskaya_Bratva), and about the [Slovak Mafia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_mafia%0A), which the Hungarians would belong to.  
>  
> 
> Name meanings! 
> 
> [Irina or Irena](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irina) comes from Ancient Greek, specifically the goddess Eirene, and it means "peace."
> 
> [Kyril and its many variants](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyril) come from the Greek kýrios, meaning "lord."
> 
> Artem is a variant of [Artyom](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artyom), which comes from the Greek saint Artemius and if you go a little farther back, the Greek goddess of the hunt, Artemis.
> 
> Finally, here's a very interesting [list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_placeholder_names_by_language) of various placeholder names. (Example: John Doe)
> 
> How do you [Krav Maga](http://www.blackbeltwiki.com/krav-maga-techniques)?
> 
> What did New York look like in the [1990's](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3125522/High-crime-street-art-no-Starbucks-Gritty-photographs-capture-downtown-New-York-looked-like-1990s.html)? How about [Russia](http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-russia-1990s-after-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union-2017-3#arnold-schwarzenegger-poses-with-russian-girls-dressed-in-national-costumes-during-the-opening-ceremony-of-moscows-planet-hollywood-cafe-september-1996-19iques)?
> 
> Obtaining a birth certificate from the former [USSR](http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6ac5444.html), what it might [look like](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Birth_certificates_of_the_Soviet_Union) and how to [read](http://wikienglish.ru/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/How-to-Translate-Russian-Birth-Certificate.pdf) it.
> 
> A history of the [tracksuit](http://www.complex.com/style/2015/11/history-of-the-tracksuit). ;D
> 
> What's a [Khrushchyovka](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka) apartment building?
> 
> When is the Julian (Orthodox) [new year](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_New_Year)? 
> 
> What's a [gopnik](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopnik)?
> 
>  
> 
> Okay that's all from me for now!


	2. то, что цветет между нами

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that which grows between us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! Thank you so much to everyone has read, commented, left kudos or subscribed to this story. It seriously means a lot to me, and definitely helps motivate me to keep going! I'd love to know what you think of this chapter—any/all kinds of feedback are welcome and appreciated :)
> 
> And thank you again (and again and again) to [Katka](http://luminousreylo.tumblr.com) who makes my paragraph breaks not-weird and random, and who helped me wrangle this wild beast of a chapter into the hopefully believable beginnings of a beautiful romance. ❤❤

An American. A fucking American. What is it about that meager scrap of information that has him flushed from scalp to throat, a frisson of heat skittering out to the buzzing tips of his fingers — overcome by a desperate need to touch her?

 

Kyril doesn't care where. He's not feeling particularly fussy. It's been over four years, after all.

 

_Just let me touch you._

 

He's pretending that he doesn't know the answer to his question, because it raises even more difficult questions. But he _does_. He _absolutely_ knows what has abruptly charged this chance meeting with electric tension—

 

She doesn't know what he is. She couldn't — it's not possible. He could be a doctor or an engineer for all she knows. A good man. A kind man. He could be anything, to her.

 

Anyone.

 

Kyril kills the engine and steps out of his car. He takes careful, halting steps towards her. He suddenly becomes aware that he never answered her question, if he spoke English, when he observes that she is eyeballing him like a cornered hare.

 

“Yes,” he says, far too long after she’s asked. He's so close he _could_ touch her now, if he wanted. If she wanted. “Car trouble?”

 

“Um.” Her eyes flick over his body in a way that is gratifying to Kyril, suggesting that her stunned, breathless reaction to his proximity is not entirely trepidation or fear. He tilts his head down at her, but she says nothing, just blinks at him, so reluctantly he pries his eyes away to glance at her engine.

 

Kyril snorts, which isn't very dignified, but the sight of it _is_ kind of funny. Everything inside the Moskvitch is a rusted out, crusted over nightmare — it's beyond saving, at least while parked on the shoulder of the M8.

 

“You're fucked,” Kyril tells the girl.

 

Still, she only stares. Her eyes get wider, if that's possible, but she says nothing.

 

He asks, “Where'd you get this piece of junk?”

 

“Your English is really good,” she whispers. She's started to shiver, bouncing from foot to foot in the snow. A single lock of her chestnut hair has escaped from beneath her wool cap and curls its way down her cheek.

 

“You didn't _buy_ it, did you?” he tries again.

 

“R—rental. Bunch of—assholes. It was such a scam, I knew it was, I just—I don't know, I didn't have much of a choice.”

 

He nods. He knows all about that racket, picking up hapless tourists from the airport and mercilessly swindling them. Small time stuff — or at least, it was when he got put away. It's probably an emerging market these days. He leans under the hood, just to check that it's well and truly hopeless — and is pleased to discover that it is.

 

“Are you a mechanic?” she asks.

 

He grins and pokes at the carburetor. “No, but my father was. Well, a pilot first. War hero. Later, a mechanic.” It's strange to share this offhand fact about his life, as though it isn't painful to him. He's not sure if he's happy that she's provoked such honesty.

 

“Oh,” she says, hushed, like he's told her some valuable secret.

 

Kyril withdraws, letting the hood slam shut. He turns and leans against it. “Where are you going?”

 

“I'll just—is there a bus, that passes along this road?” She wraps her arms around herself, curls her body inwards as though she's forming a one-woman huddle.

 

“Can't tell you that if I don't know what bus you need.”

 

“Arkhangelsk,” she sighs. “That's where I'm going. So, bus?”

 

He tries for something like a warm smile, shoving off the hood and moving towards her. She steps back, and Kyril has to corral his irritation. _Why_ would _she trust you?_ He can't help it though, he knows it's irrational, but he's still annoyed.

 

“You don't want to do that. Lots of not-nice people on the bus. Crowded, too. I'm going to Vologda, it has a train station. I can take you there and you can go by train to Arkhangelsk.”

 

He thinks, with a certain amount of bemusement, that this is the most he has spoken in — months, probably. It's been even longer since he's spoken in English — not since the last time he saw Leia. Still, it comes back to him easily enough. There's a plaintive quality to his voice he doesn't care for — it occurs to him, randomly, that perhaps this quality derives from how he was forever pleading for Leia's attention. In any event, it can't be helped, he supposes.

 

 _Trust me,_ he silently begs, hoping she can see the request in his eyes, in the way he's allowed her to keep this distance between them, in how his hands are shoved in his pockets to avoid temptation. _Let me touch you. Talk to me as though I'm a man, any man, one you don't fear. Let me remember what normal is — just for a little while._

She's chewing on the inside of her cheek, her eyes narrowed. Her knees are knocking together from the cold. She looks around, clearly weighing her non-existent options.

 

_Please, Vasilisa._

 

“Okay,” she concedes. “Just to the train station.”

 

. . .

 

When Kyril offers Rey a ride, there is some rational quadrant of her brain that sounds a blaring alarm and flashes a red light of warning.

 

 _You're already in too deep,_ screams the alarm. _He stood so close to you and it made you feel dainty, and you hate that normally, you never abide it — but you allowed it._

 

 _You're fucked_ — his words, spoken in surprisingly American-accented English, and he has no idea how _right_ he is.

 

Rey doesn't _do_ attraction — she keeps everyone in her life at a nice, platonic arm's length. She's had a few sexual partners in the past — back during her brief tenure in college — and she never really got the appeal. Hated the vulnerability that comes with sex, and gave up after a half dozen disappointing attempts.

 

So what is it about _this_ man? He's built like a refrigerator, stands a full head taller than her, and keeps looking at her with those fathomless eyes. And that's great and all but why, _why_ does she want to climb him like a vine?

 

 _This is not good,_ she thinks, as she pulls her khaki canvas backpack from the Moskvitch’s footwell. _This is not good,_ she thinks, as he takes it from her and secures it in the trunk of his Mercedes. _This is not good,_ she thinks, when he opens the door for her and uses the time it takes her to scramble into the passenger seat to check out her ass.

 

She _knows_ he does, even without looking back at him. His eyes on her are an unrelenting heat, like three pm on an August afternoon. It's enough to scald her.

 

Rey can't feel the snow in her boots anymore, nor the fingers that had been growing stiff from the raw, boreal air outside. That's all forgotten now that she's tucked into the sumptuous leather seat inside his warm car, his eyes riveted on her as he passes around the front to take his place behind the wheel.

 

He settles in, turning the key in the ignition. When he looks over at her, he blows out a sharp breath through his nose. It makes his long nostrils flare.

 

 _A bull_ , she muses, _preparing to charge._

 

This is not good.

 

. . .

 

“I'm Rey,” she says, after a while — because the pop music playing on the radio is not cutting the tension, and as she adjusts to his intense presence, she remembers her manners.

 

“That's a—woman’s name?” His brow furrows, but his eyes stay on the road.

 

“Oh, it's—um, a nickname. Rey, with an 'e.’ My name's Irena, but no one calls me that.”

 

“Irenushka,” he breathes. There's something almost reverent in his voice and she likes the way her name sounds when he says it — he rolls the 'r’ like a proper Russian, probably how her mother intended. “Kyril.”

 

“Nice to meet you,” she murmurs, offering her right hand. _Idiot, don't touch him, don't invite this madness_ — too late. His hand is off the stick shift before she can retreat. The car continues hurtling down the highway, the whole world seemingly none the wiser, as her palm is swallowed up in his, the tips of his long fingers brushing whisper-soft against the thin skin on the inside of her wrist.

 

“Your hands are cold.” He frowns, then darts a glance at her so sultry it makes her stomach somersault. That's all the warning she gets before he tugs her hand towards him and brings it to his mouth. She can feel his lips against her knuckles — full, and soft — and then he parts them, huffing a hot breath against her skin.

 

He doesn't let go; he's not looking at her. He slides his fingers down to encircle her wrist, keeping her hand there, and breathes on her. Rey watches, hypnotized. She catches him stealing another furtive glance at her, right before he envelopes the knuckle of her pointer finger between those _lips_. His tongue sneaks out and grazes over her skin.

 

He's kissing her hand. _Fuck_. It's without a doubt the most sensual kiss she's ever been given and her _knuckle_ is the recipient. It should be gross and unacceptable and she should be balling that hand into a fist which should then be applied directly to the septum of his nose, but Rey merely whimpers, her breath coming in short, tight gasps.

 

That's when she notices the tattoos — two crosses, on his pointer and middle finger, plus a more intricate cross framed by a simple, four-lined diamond on his ring finger. His grip on her wrist is relaxed, and yet — it feels casual, possessive.

 

 _You do not know this man._ Her common sense kicks in, overriding the bewildering pleasure of his touch. Who has tattoos on their fingers? Not upright citizens, in her experience.

 

Rey coughs out a nervous laugh, and jerks her hand free of his grasp. She shoves it in the pocket of her jacket, just barely resisting the insane urge to offer it back when Kyril shoots her a wounded look.

 

“I, uh—” she says, fishing around for something, anything to say. “What's in Vologda? I mean, why are you—”

 

“Business.” His deep voice has a crisp edge to it — she's upset him. Bizarrely, it makes her feel guilty. _What is even happening here? I introduced myself and you licked my hand, like a nut job, and now_ I'm _the bad guy?_

 

After a few strained minutes, he sighs, and seems to let go of his grudge. “You? In Arkhangelsk?”

 

“Actually, I'm trying to get to Vershinino,” admits Rey.

 

He scoffs. “Why? There's nothing out there but forest and churches.”

 

“It's just—” Rey pauses, taking a moment to contemplate how honest she wants to be with him, and remembers what he told her about his father. “I'm from there, originally. This is my first time going back.”

 

Kyril nods, his attention once again on the cracked, greying highway before them. “When did you leave? And in America—where do you live, now?”

 

“I—I don't remember, exactly. I was really young, and—yeah, I don't know. But I've lived in New York City for—my whole life, basically.” _In for a penny, in for a pound_ , she figures.

 

This time, when his sharp eyes slide towards her, he seems startled. But the look passes almost as soon as it appears, and his features settle back into stoic concentration.

 

“City girl,” he comments, his voice neutral.

 

“Yeah—”

 

He cuts her off. “Be careful out there. The forests in Russia are very old. Full of danger.”

 

How dare he. _I don't know you and you don't know me, Mister Tall-Dark-and-Fuckable._ She turns to watch the passing trees, the distant villages dotting the rolling white hills.

 

“I can handle myself,” Rey tells him, far more peevishly than she intended.

 

. . .

 

Yeah, he bets she can. He bets she could handle him, too. He'd like to see that. He'd like to taste her again, as well — properly, this time.

 

She needs to understand that the taiga is no place for a foreign girl to be traipsing around, that she's going to get herself into some _real_ trouble, but her posture and voice have gone defensive; she's sulking. They've only been driving for about an hour, though— there's still plenty of time. They can circle back around to this.

 

Kyril abandons the topic for now, and instead cranks up the heat. He's hoping if he makes it warm enough she'll take off her jacket, and after about twenty sweltering minutes — she does. The bulky sweater, too.

 

He tries to sneak a surreptitious peek — he's been dying to see what her body looks like under all those layers — but as soon as he does, her eyes meet his, like she’s been waiting for him. She raises an eyebrow, and he feels the back of his neck going pink, and hot. It's odd — he can't remember the last time a woman made him feel boyish like that.

 

 _Fuck it,_ he thinks. _Might as well, if I’ve already been caught._

 

He takes her in — free of her cap, her glossy brown hair brushes her defined shoulders in soft waves. She's been hiding a cute pair of perky little tits from him but he can see them now, beneath her thin cotton t-shirt, and they're just as lovely as he envisioned. Her acid washed jeans sit high on her waist and fit her like they were painted onto her lithe frame. His gaze lingers at the base of her fly, where her thighs are pressed tight together.

 

 _Fuck, Kyril, don't be like that._ There's nothing salacious about her sitting there in her normal, albeit threadbare, clothing, but he still feels the familiar rush of blood to his groin. Just the _thought_ of getting at what she's got underneath that zipper makes him harden in his pressed trousers.

 

Rey clears her throat, and Kyril flicks his eyes back to the road. She doesn't say anything about his leering but he feels chastened anyway, and he's about to apologize when her stomach lets out a thunderous grumble.

 

He hears her shifting around in her seat. She retrieves a map from her back pocket, which she unfolds and studies.

 

“Um, Kyril,” she says, the bite gone now from her voice, “How long, exactly, to Vologda?”

 

He stifles his grin. “About five hours or so.”

 

“Oh.” She falls quiet. Her stomach growls again.

 

“Hungry?” he asks, trying not to sound amused.

 

“Yeah, kind of,” she whispers.

 

Kyril points to the glove box. “Have some sunflower seeds. We'll stop and eat soon, in Rostov.”

 

 _Let me feed you. Then let me shelter you. Then let me keep you._ He thinks this, and hopes against hope that having given himself a moment to entertain the absurd notion, he can let it go. The Vori take lovers, but they can never love anything more than the criminal life to which they swear their allegiance.

 

It's nice to pretend, though. He imagines it: they're normal people on a holiday right now — heading somewhere remote, just Kyril and his prickly American girl who melts like hot sugar, sticky and sweet, but only for him. They could be like Yuri and Lara, hidden away in an icy, palatial Varykino — except their ending would be a happy one.

 

_But it wouldn't be, would it? That’s not what is real._

 

The bubble bursts. His life is _not_ his own. And Rey does not — _should_ not — trust him.

 

Besides which — he cannot lose his focus. He has a job to do tonight.

 

. . .

 

Rostov is a beautiful old town that sits on the western banks of Lake Nero. They arrive in late afternoon, the weak January sun already sinking down into the pines. Before they eat, Kyril is kind enough to drive her around, pointing out landmarks as if she's hired him to be her tour guide.

 

He often gesticulates when he speaks, she notices. He’s turned the heat up to boiling, perhaps in an attempt to divest her of her layers — which has worked, although it's also driven him to peel off his own dark suit jacket and loosen his tie. As he motions with his enormous hands to each passing site — _here is the monastery, this is the town square_ — Rey finds herself distracted by the way his dark shirt clings to the bunched muscles in his shoulders, the shifting planes of his solid chest. He rolls his sleeves up his corded forearms, and Rey wonders if women ever _actually_ swoon from intense attraction, or if that's just a cliché some romance novelist invented.

 

She thinks it might not be.

 

“Here is the kremlin,” he says, gesturing at a citadel complex whose bulbous emerald and silver domes soar up into sharp points in the cloudless sky. Their metallic tiles glimmer in the slanted light.

 

“I thought that was in Moscow?”

 

He smiles, a proper one that bares his slightly crooked white teeth and folds creases into his pale cheeks. “That's also a kremlin. It just means—fortress, in English. There are lots of kremlins in Russia.”

 

Rey admires the pale pink stone they used to build the imposing walls that surround the complex — _it looks safe in there,_ she thinks — and she likes how the snow drifted up against it makes it look a hill for children to sled down. She wonders if that's allowed — or if anyone does it, even if it's not.

 

Her stomach growls again, a humiliatingly loud disruption in the quiet cabin of the car which carries on for so long that her face is _aflame_ by the time it finally relents.

 

Kyril huffs in amusement. She likes that sound, likes that she's the one who has inadvertently cracked the shell of this intense, solemn man. Something within her vibrates with pride when he offers her another real smile. “Time to eat, I guess,” he says.

 

The place he takes her to looks like an off-brand fast food joint, but the harried women working behind the thronged counter are dressed like the Matryoshka dolls Rey saw in the airport gift shop and she can't understand a single word of the Cyrillic scripted menu.

 

Every single person looks up when they enter, and many of them continue watching — eyes hard and suspicious — as Kyril struts across the brightly-colored restaurant like he owns it, completely ignoring them. _Is this normal?_ She's puzzled by their blatant staring, and his apparent immunity to it.

 

“What would you like?” Kyril peers down at her, after they've joined the haphazard cluster of people at the counter.

 

“I—” She really wishes she could stop mortifying herself with how little she knows, how completely unprepared she is for Russia. “I like borscht,” she declares.

 

He cocks his head, as if she's said something very odd, but then he simply purses his lips and nods.

 

Many of the people seated in the hard plastic booths are still glowering at them. Rey wants to scream at them to stop — she hates how exposed she feels under their scrutiny. Suddenly, Kyril's massive hand lands on her shoulder, engulfing it. She twists her neck to look up at him, ready to snap — his lips are pressed into a thin, angry line.

 

“Here, in front of me,” he directs, steering her so that she's facing him, and the thick breadth of his body obscures her from view of most of the seating area. The people standing near them at the counter steal sly looks from the corners of their eyes, but Rey watches Kyril meet their gaze with a dark glare, and soon they are all steadfastly pretending the couple does not exist.

 

It's a relief, which in and of itself is strange because Rey has never found closeness like this to be a relief for anything.

 

“Hi,” she says, as they press forward into the cluster.

 

“Hmm,” he hums, one hand sweeping down her spine. It tickles and she shivers, which makes him press his hand more firmly against the small of her back, bringing her body into his.

 

“What _is_ this place?” she asks, in an attempt to distract herself from how much she liked his protective manoeuvre. “It looks like a fake Russian McDonald's.”

 

He gives her another real smile.

 

“Russkoye— _that just means Russian_ —Bistro. When McDonald's came to Moscow, people liked how fast and easy it was, but wanted it to be more... Russian. So some genius opened this chain. Things have changed so much, in this country.” He pauses. “Things are _changing_ so much.”

 

He looks wistful, like he's lost in a memory. Rey doesn't know quite what to say — New York is a city built on change, and growing up without a permanent family, change was all she ever knew. She thinks she can understand, though. Her life has been full of tumult — a lot of the time, the arrival of change has not meant for the better. Some of the time, it has. A roll of the dice, really.

 

Idly, as they wait, she speculates about Kyril’s childhood. _Was he happy? Did he ever have a dog? Does he have parents who love him?_ Rey wonders if he likes the drastic metamorphosis his country is undergoing. She lets herself daydream about just relaxing together somewhere quiet, getting to know each other. He could explain the tattoos on his fingers, of course, but there are other things she's curious about as well — how does he speak English so fluently and without a heavy accent, where has he been all her life, was he staring at her crotch with disgust or interest?

 

“You sure you want borscht?” Kyril asks, interrupting her reverie. They've reached the counter.

 

Rey throws her shoulder up in a shrug that she hopes comes across as indifferent. The place smells amazing — the aroma of grilled meat and fried dough wafts out from the kitchen — but she has no idea what to ask for.

 

“We’ll get some other food. You can try it.” He's looking at her like he understands, like he knows about every single thing that's ever left her feeling ashamed or demeaned. It's too much.

 

Needing space from his empathy, she tells him, “I'll find us a place to sit.”

 

“I saw one in the back,” he says, rolling his head in the direction he wants her to go. She feels the crowd's hostile eyes on her once more as she heads towards it, but after she's tucked herself into the very last booth, her back to the wall allowing her to stubbornly return their stare as Kyril did, they give up and return to their meals. A few minutes later he joins Rey at the formica-covered table, placing a tray laden with delicious smelling food before her.

 

“What do I owe you?” she asks, smiling.

 

She thinks maybe his eyes bug out, just a little bit, as he collapses into his side of the booth. He leans in close over the table.

 

"What—do—you— _mean_?” he asks in a low voice, choosing each word with deliberate care. He doesn't blink; she's not even sure if he's breathing.

 

“For the food?” Rey fails to see the problem, can't understand why he — but then, his eyes trail down to her sweater-covered chest and — oh. Oh. Shit. _Shit_. Panicked, she sputters, “Rubles! Money! I'm talking about money. Not anything— _else_.”

 

“Ah,” he says, slumping back into his booth. He runs his fingers through his dark hair, releases a heavy breath. “Rubles. For the—food. No, no. No money. You're my guest.”

 

There is a very uncomfortable moment during which they sit staring at one another — Rey knows what he _thought_ she meant and Kyril _knows_ she knows and they're both just — stuck, in this feedback loop of awkward.

 

It's Kyril who finally saves the day. “This is pelmeni,” he announces, pointing to a small plate of fried golden dumplings. “Golubtsy, cabbage rolls.” A bowl with two dark orange sauce-covered lumps. “Zakuski—salad, pickled vegetables, cheese, cured pork. Drinking food, but—it’s good.” He glances at her, like he's checking to see if it's safe. Rey tries to muster a smile. He returns it. “Kvass,” he says, nodding at the small glass filled with an amber beverage near Rey’s hand. “It comes from rye, but it's sweet. No alcohol.”

 

“And of course,” he points to the bowl of thick red beetroot soup, “borscht.”

 

“It's a feast,” mumbles Rey. “Thank you.”

 

They both tuck in, and for a while the silence between them is comfortable, just the happy absence of talking that occurs during a good meal. The food is a wonderful mixture of salty and savory and sour and Rey finds herself thinking maybe Russia isn't so bad after all. Finally, when the pangs in her belly have eased and she doesn't think she can take another bite, she peeks up from her plate.

 

Kyril is watching her. How long has he been sitting there, not eating, enjoying his front-row seat while she chowed down? She frowns at her hands — they're greasy, from the cold cuts and the dumplings. She's dropped a blob of reddish sauce on her shirt. What a fucking mess she is.

 

“Um,” she starts, trying to look dignified while she uses about fifteen tiny paper napkins to wipe clean her fingers. “I was thinking—about my car. Should I—”

 

“What?” he snaps. He can't seem to tear his eyes away from her hands, but when he does it's as though he's coming out of a daze. “No. Fuck the car, and fuck those con artists. They wouldn’t give you a single kopek back, for your trouble. If I had the time, I'd go take care of it for you myself, but—”

 

“What do you mean, _take care of it?_ ”

 

There's something she needs to glean from what he's just let slip, a very nasty hunch that has been nagging her — the car, the suit, the tattoos, the unmistakable authority with which he speaks, his assumption that she was offering her _body_ in exchange for food—

 

“Nothing, I just meant—to help you. Translate. Talk to them,” he hurries to assure her.

 

 _Oh god,_ Rey thinks _. I don't know this man at all._

 

And _yet_. She thinks maybe she does, a little bit. To Rey, it seems that a cloud of despondency follows Kyril around, a secret loneliness she knows all too well. She thinks he might be a kindred spirit in that sense. And what's more is — she _wants_ him, wants him to touch her, wants him to keep looking at her as if she's some kind of goddess—

 

This is not good.

 

. . .

 

By the time they reach the outskirts of Vologda, it's been dark for hours. Rey is snoring softly, curled up in the seat next to him, and Kyril doesn't bother to wake her up quite yet. Even if she could see anything besides the distant city lights, Kyril can't imagine she'd be very impressed. Vologda, in his opinion, is just another old crumbling muscovite city in the northern Thebaid that has been disfigured by the Soviets’ relentless industrialization. Factory smoke, he can just make out through the mire, billows out of multiple smoke stacks rising up between church spires. In the bald light of day, he imagines they could watch the grimy film and garbage float down the once crystalline Vologda River.

 

He glances at Rey. She sleeps so peacefully — he's pleased that she's lowered her guard enough to be this vulnerable around him. He feels a little envious too. What wouldn't he give for one night of decent sleep?

 

Kyril takes a shuddering breath. It's been a truly weird day. He can't say he's unhappy, having chanced upon this diamond in the rough, but it's stressful — the newness of her skittish presence, the friction of their unspoken baggage, their different cultures and native languages, the thrumming attraction between them.

 

There are things he wants to be bold enough to ask her. _Are you afraid of me? Could you ever not be? Do you believe in God, in marriage, in happily-ever-after? Did you have a good childhood, and if so, what was_ that _like? Do you want children? Fat happy babies with dark mops of hair and deep-set hazel eyes?_

 

 _Боже мой._ His wild hope for things he can't have is his own worst enemy.

 

Before he knows it he's navigating along Babushkina Square— the plaza on which Vologda’s train station is situated. He parks in front of the peppermint candy-colored building, watching fleecy snowflakes drift down onto the windshield. Eventually, he turns to Rey. He has prolonged this for as long as he can.

 

“Irenushka,” he whispers.

 

Her eyelids pulse — behind them her eyes are roving back and forth in the final throes of a dream — until abruptly, they blink open. The smile she gives him is groggy and shy, and she yawns, making a soft chirping sound as her mouth opens wide. She startles when she takes in their surroundings.

 

“We're here already?” Her voice is thick with sleep.

 

 _Don't let her leave._ This is what Kyril is thinking, looking at the neat slope of her nose and her soft cheeks and the subtle feline curve to her eyes. He knows these flights of fancy he's been indulging are impossible, but one night isn't. They could have one night.

 

“We don't have to be,” he says. “I have a hotel room. There might not even be a train tonight. Stay—stay with me. Tomorrow, you can go to Arkhangelsk. I'll help you, I'll take you there myself. Just—”

 

_Let me touch you._

 

She gawks at him, jaw hanging. Her pink lips are parted and pulling in shallow breaths.

 

_Stupid, Kyril, very stupid._

 

He looks at his hands, white knuckled on the wheel and gear shift. She's seen the tattoos on them, she was clearly offended when he stupidly thought she was propositioning him in Russkoye Bistro, and she definitely noticed the terrified way the other patrons stared at him, waiting for him to do something thuggish and violent. _Why on Earth would she stay?_

 

Rey hasn't said anything yet, so he risks a hopeful little peek in her direction. He has a moment of panic when he isn't sure if she's still breathing but then he realizes that she's just gone very, very still.

 

“Not because you feel you owe me anything. You don't,” he entreats, digging the hole deeper. “Just because you want—”

 

“Yeah.” Rey nods, a tiny almost imperceptible movement. She places her slender hand over his on the gear shift.

 

Her eyes meet his, gentle but clear. Perceptive. She sighs.

 

“I want.”

 

. . .

 

She shouldn't say yes. Rey _knows_ that — she's no dummy. This crosses a line she has spent her entire adult life clawing into the sand, the one that holds people at a safe distance where she can keep her eye on them.

 

 _Would you still want to fuck me if you knew how screwed up I am?_ This is the thought hammering at Rey's temples as Kyril drives her through the silent, snowy streets of Vologda. The strobed illumination from the streetlights continuously shapes and reshapes his face — now he is boyish and shy, now he looks half-feral, now he is regal, now he is a brooding mystery — and the nervous anticipation for what she's agreed to makes Rey's stomach flutter. _Do you only want my body, or my face? Could it ever just be me, mess that I am?_

 

Even Finn and Poe, her best friends, had waited years to be allowed across her _line_. And they were patient, they cared about her from afar until she was ready — it's part of what made her let them in, their unconditional acceptance. It’s the same with Luke. But these relationships were hard-won. It takes time for Rey, it always has. She's been let down, forgotten, just on the brink of loving a family when she was foisted back into the system — all of it, too many times. Trust hasn't come easily for her in years.

 

So — no. There is nothing _normal_ about this impulsive decision she's made — is making. And yet, here she is. She hasn't even known Kyril for a full twelve hours and she's letting him drive her to some hotel. And if she's honest with herself, Rey can admit that she'll probably let him do anything else he wants once they get there.

 

As long as he keeps looking at her like _that_.

 

Why? Why does she _want_ to trust him? He's tall, he's handsome, it's been too long since anyone touched her naked body. All of these are reasons to throw caution to the wind and fuck a virtual stranger, but — they're not reasons to trust one.

 

She knows, though. Rey has spent the entirety of their day together studying his expressive features, hyper aware of his small tells — his pursed lips, the twitching muscle under his left eye, how the knuckles of his tight fists go white when he's asking for something. Maybe this is crazy, maybe it's foolish, but she trusts him because she _wants_ to trust him, because she believes these tells speak to his earnest desire for her. And she believes him when he says she doesn't owe him, that this isn't some transactional arrangement, that he isn't using her.

 

And because she _feels_ his loneliness in his tells — it calls out to her own.

 

That's it.

 

The tension between them is so fraught, the silence so weighted, that Rey feels like she's swimming as he parks the car and they tromp through the snow to the hotel entrance. There is an air of dilapidated grandeur about the place, like the mansion of a pauperized aristocrat. The lobby is frigid, with three-story high ceilings whose molded plaster is peeling, lit by massive crystal-draped chandeliers and candelabras covered by a layer of dust so thick she can spy it from the reception desk. A surly older woman gives them the stink eye while she takes Kyril's money and hands him a key, and then—

 

None of it matters, because he's taken her hand in his. He leads her up the carpeted grand staircase and down a long corridor of numbered doors, barrelling forward at such a hurried pace that Rey is forced to take two quick steps for every one of his — she's practically jogging in order to keep up. She feels a nervous giggle bubble up as he comes to a halt before one of the doors — _this is crazy, this is so rash, this is either the best or worst decision of her life_ — but then his key is in the lock, they're passing through the threshold into a room with that same sense of downtrodden nobility—

 

Kyril tosses their bags carelessly, switches on a dim lamp, and then he is on her, forcing her back into the door.

 

“ _Моя нежная девочка_ ,” he murmurs, his eyes holding Rey captive as his knee pushes between her thighs. She doesn't know what he's said but it doesn't matter because she _understands_ the sentiment. She reaches up and tucks a stray piece of sable hair back behind his ear.

 

“Kyril.” Scrapes her fingernails against the nape of his neck. “Come _here_.”

 

Rey is certain there is a cosmic scribe somewhere writing out a comprehensive list of reasons why this is a bad idea, waiting for judgement day to throw them back in her face, but Kyril’s lust-darkened eyes sink down to her mouth, his lips following and honestly? Just the light pressure of their lips meeting — an innocent first kiss — is enough to override every argument against this.

 

Then his hands are on her hips, hauling her up until her arms are level with his wide shoulders and she can wrap herself him around like the vine she imagined this morning.

 

There's some part of her that knows: the reason she has been on such high alert all day is because from the moment he stepped out of the car, this is where she wanted to end up.

 

Here, pinned against a hotel room door, feeling his warm solid body and his thick cock stiffening even through her heavy winter clothes — his lips plucking at her own, chaste kisses that contrast intoxicatingly with the ways his hips thrust at her.

 

“Kyril,” she repeats, and pants into his mouth. She needs more than vestal and sweet — her molten cunt is clenching around nothing, creamy heat pooling in her underwear. She wants him to kiss her like he means it — like he's going to fuck her the way she needs.

 

“Yes, milaya, yes,” he breathes.

 

He nips at her bottom lip and her thighs twitch, pulling him a scant fraction closer. When his tongue meets hers, a visceral slide of wet muscle that Rey has always found a bit ridiculous, she thinks she could come _just_ from this. Just dry humping and making out in a frostbitten hotel room in the middle of nowhere with this huge beautiful man who looks at her like she's the answer to some existential question he's grown tired of asking himself.

 

Kyril rears back, his hands gripping each thigh like she weighs nothing. She groans, a needy sound in the back of her throat, which makes him grin. But before she can reel him back in he's lurching across the room and dropping her onto the low slung king-sized bed.

 

He stands at the foot, his pupils blown wide. His trousers are tented, but he doesn't seem to have an ounce of shame over it. He's breathing heavily while he pulls off his suit jacket, and he gestures to her bomber jacket.

 

“Take that off. The sweater, the shirt, the bra too,” he growls. “All of it. I want to see your pretty сиськи.”

 

Rey doesn't need the English-to-Russian dictionary in her backpack to know what he's talking about. She scrambles up onto her knees, tearing off her layers until she's sitting there topless — vulnerable, on display for his inspection. The room is so cold; her bared skin instantly pebbles with gooseflesh. Her nipples are hard puckered buds, and Kyril's eyes have become riveted to them.

 

He shuffles onto the bed. Rey wishes he'd take his own shirt off but before she can ask him to, one large hand is spanning her back, forcing her to arch it while he leans down to take a nipple in his mouth.

 

“Uh,” she says, incapable of anything more eloquent. She threads her fingers through the roots of his hair and tugs softly until he drops back onto his heels and hoists her onto one of his burly thighs, still delivering loud, smacking kisses to her breasts.

 

The friction is perfect. The seam of her fly rubs at her clitoris as she rocks in time with his ministrations. One breast is warmed in his palm, the other in his mouth — the heat from being in his orbit, his hand on her back supporting her, staves off the room's sharp chill. Running her hands along the stiff silk-cotton blend that covers his biceps, she grinds down hard against him.

 

She's going to come — she's almost there. A clarion hum passes through her straining muscles, fluttering pleasure diffusing from her core out to her limbs as she climbs higher, higher, higher still—

 

“ _Я хотел тебя весь день_ ,” Kyril mutters against her clavicle, and she can feel the reverberations of his deep, gravelly voice in her belly. He kisses his way up, then latches onto her neck with his full lips. She doesn't know what he's said, but the new angle brings their chests flush together. The medley of his tongue laving over the sensitive skin beneath her ear, the feel of his hard pectorals and smooth shirt against her breasts, a few more gyrations of her hips, pushing her swollen bundle of nerves against his thigh — she's _flying_.

 

“Fu—fu—”

 

“That's _good_ , milaya,” he rumbles in her ear. “So good. Come for me, sweet girl.”

 

Her cunt quivers, again and again. Rey rests her shaking hands on his stubbly cheeks, bringing him in for a sloppy kiss. The orgasm is sharp and bright and pulses through her — has her whimpering from its undulating pleasure. As it recedes, it feels like she's sinking into a warm bath, her body gone pliant against his.

 

“God,” says Kyril, laying a soft kiss on the Cupid’s bow of her lips, one cheek and then other, the lids of her closed eyes. “What a gift.”

 

She wants to ask him what he means, but before she can, their interlude is interrupted by the faint tolling of church bells.

 

“Huh?” Rey asks, at the sound. “Kind of late for that, isn't it?”

 

Kyril goes tense. His arms twine around her back and pull her to him as a frightened child does a ragdoll.

 

“ _Блядь_.”

 

She opens her eyes, and finds herself looking into Kyril's. He's pouting, huffing disappointed breaths out through his nostrils.

 

“Полунощница. The all-night vigil, at the church. It's midnight. I— _fuck_ —I lost track of the time,” he fumes. He drops his head down to her neck, laving at the blooming bruise he's made there, before he begins to disentangle himself from her.

 

“Wait—what—” she tries, but horror chokes her — hot shame piercing through the soporific haze of her orgasm—

 

_No, no, no. Don't leave, not when I've let you in. Don't hurt me like this, not you, I barely know you but I could—_

Tears begin to well, unwelcome but unstoppable.

 

“Don't,” she croaks.

 

“I have to go,” he says, his back to her as he pulls his jacket back on, then a heavy wool coat and leather gloves that he procures from his abandoned suitcase in the small foyer. She catches him trying to adjust himself in his trousers, clearly still aroused, and it would be funny if she weren't so fucking _distraught_.

 

He returns, drawing close to her. She's crossed her arms over her breasts — when he leans down with the intention to kiss her, Rey falls back onto the bed in an attempt to get away from him. She crawls backwards until she reaches the other side, then stumbles off it. When she stands, she lifts her chin haughtily in a desperate ploy to feel less cheap, less _used_.

 

“What—the fuck, _Kyril_?” she sputters, her voice breaking.

 

“I—”

 

She thinks she sees, but no, that can't be — remorse? _Chagrin_? Something is haunting him, it's there in the hangdog slump of his shoulders, that rapid twitch under his left eye, how he clenches his gloved fists at his sides.

 

“I have a job to do,” he says at last. Rey yanks on her sweater, retrieved from the floor, then re-crosses her arms.

 

“Please, Irenushka, say goodbye to me. _Properly_.”

 

“Screw you.”

 

He deflates, a defeated sigh on his lips. _Those were on my breasts five minutes ago,_ she thinks, feeling hysterical.

 

“ _Please_.” His hand is raised towards her, his fingers curled in a come-hither gesture. “I'll come back in an hour. Two, at the most. You can go to sleep, and when you wake up — you'll be in my arms.”

 

Their standoff draws on for so long that Rey, bereft of his body heat, begins to shiver. He refuses to look away from her, his eyes beseeching. _He's upset_ , she realizes _. He doesn't want to leave me like this—angry with him._  It could be that he's just like all the others, only wants to get his dick wet, but Rey thinks — there's a forlornness in how he's staring at her, hands outstretched. Like maybe it wasn't _just_ sex he wanted when he brought her here tonight.

 

So Rey caves. She passes around the bed and into his arms and yes, it scares her a little, how easily she forgives him. She doesn't know him. Where is he even _going_? Surely it's criminal, whatever he's about to do, but—

 

“I'm not good at talking,” he mutters in her ear. She supposes this is his form of an apology.

 

“You could've told me you had some clandestine late-night meeting before you brought me here,” she grumbles.

 

“Yes. I could have. But what if that made you say no?”

 

“Kyril—”

 

His lips find hers, a return to the chaste kisses of earlier.

 

“I will tell you _anything_ you want to know about me, if you're still here in this room—waiting for me in _that_ bed—when I return,” he utters, completely serious.

 

“Okay,” Rey says. She knows she's giving up something but she'd like to think that the promise he's making means she's also getting something in return. “I'll stay. But—”

 

“What? What's wrong, milaya?”

 

“It's _freezing_ in here,” she whines.

 

Kyril smirks. “It always is—their heaters are shit. Not many choices for hotels in this city, unfortunately. But—” He releases her, retreating to his suitcase and returning with a furry object in hand.

 

It's one of those big Russian hats. Made with soft, almost silken silvery fur that also lines its ear flaps — when Kyril places it on her head it sinks down to the bridge of her nose.

 

“This is a good look for you,” he tells her, barely able to hide the mirth in his voice.

 

“Ha.”

 

She adjusts it, pushing the back down so that the front sits on her brow.

 

“It’s an ushanka—a traditional hat, very warm.”

 

“It's nice,” she says, suddenly feeling sheepish. Maybe it's the adoring way he's looking at her, maybe she's feeling a little bit ravaged from the sheer impulsiveness of today's decisions. She lets out a yawn, wrapping her arms around him once more.

 

Rey just wants to bathe in the heat and the clean, wintry smell of him for a second longer.

 

“Мой волчoнок,” he says, resting his chin atop her head.

 

“Hmm?”

 

“You look like a little wolf.” His finger under her chin raises her face so he can graze his lips against hers — and she knows, by the look on his face, that this is the last kiss. Until he returns.

 

“Sleep,” he whispers. “I'll be back soon.”

 

Rey nods. “You better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Here are some references, including a translation I forgot to include from the last chapter.
> 
> The question Kyril asks Rey in Ch. 1: "Здравствуй принцесса, у тебя есть проблема?” _[Zdravstvuy printsessa, u tebya yest' problema?]_  
>  **Hello princess, do you have a problem?**
> 
>  
> 
> Russian in this chapter:
> 
> "Боже мой." _[Bozhe moy.]_  
>  **My God./Dear me.**
> 
> "Моя нежная девочка." _[Moya nezhnaya devochka.]_  
>  **My sweet/tender girl.**
> 
> "...сиськи." _[sysʹky]_  
>  **BEWBS**
> 
> “Я хотел тебя весь день." _[Ya khotel tebya ves' den'.]_  
>  **I've wanted you all day.**
> 
> "Блядь." _[Blyad.]_  
>  **Literally this translates as 'Whore' but it's used in the same way we exclaim 'Damn!' or 'Fuck!'**
> 
> "Полунощница." _[Polunoshtnitsa.]_  
>  **The midnight office; see notes below for more on this!**
> 
> "Мой волчoнок." _[Moy volchonok.]_  
>  **Sneaky sneaky Kyril is actually saying ' _My_ little wolf', which he mis-translates for Rey.**
> 
> Other stuff:
> 
> The [Moskvitch 412](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskvitch_412%0A) and the [Mercedes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_C-Class_\(W202\)) I imagine Kyril would be driving.
> 
> An interesting article from this time period about just how intimidating the [Russian mob](https://mobile.nytimes.com/1994/07/08/business/us-business-and-the-russian-mob.html) was.
> 
> What's the [taiga](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga)?
> 
> I don't have a reference for how much Eastern Europeans fucking _love_ sunflower seeds, only my own experiences XD
> 
> Are there a lot of [kremlins](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlin_\(fortification\)) in Russia?
> 
> What does [Rostov](http://rusmania.com/central/yaroslavl-region/rostov-veliky/sights/in-the-historical-centre/rostov-kremlin) look like?
> 
> So I fudged things a little with [Russkoye Bistro](http://vilhelmkonnander.blogspot.hu/2006/07/russkoe-bistro-vs-mcdonalds.html?m=1), which was actually started in Moscow in 1995. Here is a Russian-language [article](https://openrussia.org/mobile/post/view/4118/) with some very interesting photos, particularly [this one](https://openrussia.s3.amazonaws.com/media/legacy/notes/redactor/o/45/b9/45b99bbb10a2.jpg). Those poor women look so stressed out.
> 
> Some reflections on [McDonald's](https://www.csmonitor.com/1997/0304/030497.intl.intl.1.html) opening in Moscow in 1990.  
>    
> Truthfully [Vologda](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vologda) seems like a very nice city with a lot of [well-preserved architecture](http://cultinfo.ru/en/nasledie/historical-cities/vologda.php) and I'm very sorry to anyone reading this who is from there for dragging it but it's like, if you write a story about a Russian man in which he doesn't lament the evils of modernity, does it even _count_?
> 
> What is the [Northern Thebaid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Thebaid)?
> 
> Cool thing I learned about the word [muscovite](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/muscovite) while writing this chapter: it can refer to a contemporary Muscow city-dweller or the medieval Grand Duchy of Moscow!
> 
> Some sweet [nothings](http://www.funrussian.com/2011/07/18/russian-terms-of-endearment/) to whisper in your Russian bae's ear.
> 
> Speaking of Russian baes, when Kyril refers to 'Yuri and Lari', he's thinking of the star-crossed lovers from [_Doctor Zhivago_](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Zhivago_\(novel\)). Varykino is Yuri Zhivago's countryside home, or dacha.
> 
> The Russian Orthodox church has a complex tradition of [bell-ringing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Orthodox_bell_ringing), including during the [Midnight Office](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_office) which, if I'm understanding correctly, is one of the canonical hours of the [All-Night Vigil](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-night_vigil).
> 
> And finally, what is an [ushanka](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushanka)?
> 
> That's all from me. Thanks for reading!


	3. место, где все должно измениться

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the place where all things must change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you _so_ much to anyone who has read, left comments or kudos, or subscribed! It seriously is so awesome to know that people are enjoying the fic. I'm a bit nervous about this chapter because there's some action, but hopefully (thanks to a very generous couple rounds of beta-ing from the wonderful [Kachenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/czechia)) it reads coherently.
> 
> Also huge thank you to [Hosnian Prime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hosnianprime/pseuds/Hosnianprime) who helped me out with the Hungarian in this chapter even though I kind of threw her countrymen under the bus. I promise I really do love Hungary and its people even though the dudes in this chapter are not very nice, and Kyril is just being a cranky bitch because of his blue balls!
> 
>  **Warning:** there is gun and knife violence in this chapter. I don't describe anything in very explicit detail, but if you want to skip that, when you see: **[You don't want to play fair? Maybe _they_ will]** , stop reading. When you get to the final passage which begins: **[Kyril's Mercedes is perforated with bullet holes...]** , you should be okay. Feel free to find me on tumblr if you have any questions!

As Kyril makes his way out into the cold dark night, he sends up a prayer to all who might be listening — Belobog and Chernobog, the old Gods of light and darkness; Jesus and the Holy Virgin; his namesake Saint Cyril, who invented the alphabet and tamed the Slavs.

 

From all of them, he begs for mercy.

 

He prays to his money, to his power, to the Makarov pistol tucked into the shoulder holster he slings on in the car, to the knife strapped to his left calf, to everything he has in his life: _let this go smoothly. Bring me back to her, to the tender and lovely thing we have planted in that anointed hotel room._

 

He drives out to an area of town whose barren streets are lined with large, faceless factories and warehouses. Only the passing street lamps are witness to the bead of sweat that runs down his temple, his muttered self-assurances, the simmering boil of his blood as his thoughts shift from her beautiful, dusky nipples — _her breasts so small and soft, fitting so perfectly in his palms and mouth, her tiny waist trapped in his hands, her exultant moans when she came on his thigh_ — to the sordid matter that awaits him.

 

He reaches an apartment block in a rundown district of Vologda, where he parks his car and marches towards the designated meeting place: an unremarkable building, practically indistinguishable from its neighbors. Lights are on here and there in the block, lace-curtained windows cast in the eerie flickering blue of late-night television.

 

Outside the unmarked ingress of the ryumochnaya, a basement bar hidden away beneath the unremarkable building, Smyrnoi Mikhailov Mitaka stands waiting on the icy concrete sidewalk, shoulders hunched up around his ears to stave off the cold. Two other brodyaga are with him — both parties having agreed to bringing only four members — but it is not the sight of _them_ that sends Kyril’s thoughts hurtling back to his East Berlin days.

 

This always happens when he sees Mitaka. They'd met as boys while enrolled at their elite polytechnic secondary school, where they'd shared a dorm room despite their five-year age difference.

 

 _You are both exempt from the daily Russian lesson_ , the director had told them in crisp, German-accented Russian. _As such, we expect you to work together in dedicating this free period to the improvement of your German language skills._

 

They'd gotten along well enough. Mitaka had quickly learned to give Kyril, still Veniamin then — Benjamin to the Germans — a wide berth when his bellicose moods struck and he, in turn, never teased the younger boy for his serious, studious nature.

 

Kyril hardly ever thinks about those parts of his Berlin life, save for when he sees Mitaka — the scratchy wool of his school uniform, the unseasoned mush they choked down three times a day in the canteen, the rote memorization of geography and math, German and physics. The endless extolling of communism's virtues, recited by a bored lector and repeated in a droning monotone by a room full of listless children.

 

No, when he thinks of East Berlin, he mostly thinks of the _wall_. It's gone now, he knows. Kyril was in-between prison sentences when they tore it down; he watched them do it on the television in his apartment in Moscow. Berlin is a single city once more.

 

But the wall still split the city back then — bullet-pocked but unbreakable, concrete topped in some areas by coiled barbed wire, higher than the height of three men.

 

When he thinks of the wall, he loses himself to a memory: standing on a street corner in the stinging Autumn rain as a sleek black BMW stops at the Eastern side of Checkpoint Charlie — the armed Stasi officers doing one final inspection of the driver's visa papers and vehicle, before it pulls up to the curb beside him — the window rolling down to reveal Luke inside, smiling and waving for him to jump in—

 

Luke's futile attempt to save him. _This_ is what he remembers most about Berlin. His uncle had traded in on his minor celebrity as an American boxing champion in order to obtain the paperwork that allowed him to visit Ven a handful of times. Their appointments had mostly been conducted in chrome-plated delicatessens where the waitresses rolled their eyes the minute Luke — so painfully, obviously American — walked through the door.

 

Over sauerkraut and sausages his uncle had begged him to consider applying for his rightful American citizenship, fleeing the Soviet Union, joining him in New York.

 

 _I'll help you,_ _Ben,_ his uncle had said. _Leia wants you to get out of here. You'll have a better life in the US._

 

But he couldn't have, could he? Unbeknownst to Luke, or Leia, or Han, or anyone but Mitaka — he'd already begun running errands for members of the Solntsevskaya Bratva working out of East Germany. He was already making a name for himself in the Bratva. _Ruthless,_ they said of him. _Smart as a whip, and capable of anything._

 

Even back then, not yet fifteen years old — he was already in too deep.

 

Luke eventually gave up on him, stopped coming to visit, went home to New York. Veniamin dropped out not long after that — unceremoniously, without informing his parents — and went to take his place as a shestyorka in Moscow.

 

Mitaka tilts his head at him now. His fluffy ushanka hat makes the action look comical.

 

“Ren?” he asks. “Are you with us? Are you ready?”

 

“Why wouldn't I be?” he spits out.

 

The sight of Mitaka always rankles — an errant sense of something, perhaps guilt, strikes him when he remembers how they met again in Moscow years later, after Kyril had finished serving his first sentence. They'd still been teenagers then — children, really. Mitaka had been desperate for work; he'd graduated with honors but had been unable to find any employment and Kyril — well. Kyril had just been helping an old friend.

 

“This the place?” he asks, turning towards the heavy steel door.

 

Mitaka nods.

 

“Then I suppose we'd better fucking get on with it, hadn't we?”

 

Mitaka pales, probably in response the foul turn that Kyril's mood has taken, and nods again.

 

 _Of course,_ he thinks as they descend a dark stairwell that reeks of mold, _Mitaka never developed my stomach for violence nor my appetite for destruction._ Mitaka also never had Kyril's elite pedigree: son of a Soviet war hero and an American diplomat — Snoke had been drooling all over himself to have Veniamin join their ranks, although the high regard for his father had turned on a dime when the rumors began spreading about Han speaking to the police.

 

_They're just using you, Ven._

 

Kyril steps through an open doorway at the end of a dank basement hallway, and is greeted by the usual claustrophobic atmosphere of a ryumochnaya — walls festooned with sports regalia and hunting rifles, a muted football game playing on a television in one corner, a haggard babushka glaring at him from behind the bar. The door at her back leads to the kitchen; its grimy porthole window glows and the faint clanging of pans can be heard from within.

 

Four men — one middle-aged, three who can't be much older than Kyril — are seated at a table lit by a naked light bulb.

 

At a table against the far wall, two young teenagers — Solntsevskaya, Kyril can tell by the tattoos on their necks — are wielding instruments and singing a melancholy folk song for the visitors. Their makeshift symphony, the wheezing groan of an accordion and plucked twanging of a balalaika, is offset by the boys’ clear voices.

 

The Hungarians listen, enraptured. The oldest is drinking a beer, the other three have chosen vodka. None have noticed Kyril and his associates’ entrance.

 

“Vodka,” says Kyril, to the old woman, and she scowls at him before pouring one. The boys stop playing, nodding silently at their seniors.

 

Kyril takes his drink to the Hungarians’ table, where he shucks his coat and gloves before joining them. His brodyaga, Mitaka and the other two, trail behind. After they are all seated but no one has yet spoken, merely eying each other up in charged silence, Kyril arches an eyebrow at the older Hungarian. In his peripheral vision, he notices Mitaka nod at the boys, who hastily pack away their instruments away and file out of the bar.

 

Kyril has been given the basic gist of this meeting’s purpose by one of the Bratva’s bookkeepers. The Hungarians are to deliver three dozen Kalashnikovs at a favorable price — far lower than what the Ukrainians are asking for these days.

 

“Ez az a fickó? Nem valami nagy szám,” sneers one of the young men.

 

“Úgy néz ki, mint egy veszett kutya,” adds another, who looks to be younger than Kyril. His lip is curled with contempt. “Nem kellett volna idehívnunk a többieket. Ennek rossz vége lesz.”

 

Kyril doesn't need to understand their bizarre language to interpret their disdainful postures and jeering tone. _Fucking Hungarians. Why can't you speak a Slavic language, like the rest of the Eastern Bloc?_ He doesn't take his eyes off the eldest man.

 

“Kussolj te fasz, és ne legyél tahó. Beszélj oroszul,” the man growls at them, returning Kyril's gaze. It's a rebuke or a command, judging by the sour expressions on their faces. To Kyril he says, in an oddly lilting Russian, “I am Fekete János, and these are my sons—Ákos, Levente, and Szabolcs.”

 

Already Kyril can feel the sweat bleeding through his black dress shirt. _God damn your backwards names and your backwards language._ He taps his foot in an effort to expel some of his nervous energy, then downs his vodka in one swallow.

 

The Hungarians are, in his experience, savvy operators. They are forever suspicious of being cheated or exploited, perhaps because they are so frequently guilty of the same. They pride themselves on being a clever people — oftentimes, they are too clever for their own good.

 

Not that he can boast of the Bratva being much better.

 

But Kyril needs this to go smoothly. And quickly. For the first time in years he has someone waiting for him — someone who, he wants to believe, cares if he lives or dies.

 

In the course of one day, he has become a man with something to lose.

 

“So János,” Kyril says, without acknowledging the other three, “What have you brought us?”

 

. . .

 

Rey gets into the bed after Kyril leaves. She turns off the lamp, kicks her legs around to warm up the gelid sheets, and closes her eyes.

 

She waits five minutes — each one extends itself to the length of a minor eternity. Aeons seem to have passed while she lies stiff and freezing in the dark, musty room.

 

With an exasperated huff, she turns the lamp back on. Grabbing her travel kit from her backpack, she enters the bathroom. It's cold, perhaps even colder than the room, and the water takes several more eternal minutes to heat to the point of lukewarm. She cleans herself mechanically at first, but then, thinking of Kyril's mouth on her breasts, the devastating Russian endearments he mumbled against her skin, the feel of his huge hands spanning her waist — holding her where he wanted, making her feel so _good_ —

 

She lowers her thumb to her clitoris, circling it lazily and sliding one of her fingers along her slit, then inside. It doesn't take long for her to come but the orgasm is as tepid and unsatisfying as the water streaming over her.

 

When she steps out of the shower, she takes advantage of the steam's slight residual warmth to observe her damp body in the mirror behind the sink. She's a greyhound of a woman, lean sinew and long legs, meager breasts that at least have the decency to sit high and pert on her chest. Her skin is tawny and dusted with freckles from past summers spent sunbathing on the roof of her building with Poe and Finn. Two hip bones protrude from the flat plane of her belly, but her limbs are corded with ropy muscle, her shoulders sculpted and strong despite the clavicles that jut sharply from them.

 

On her left side, a silvery scar — from a wound that has long since healed, physically at least — runs from the top of her thigh to her knee. It is still slightly puckered where the blade dug the deepest, near her kneecap.

 

Rey averts her gaze from it, wrapping one of the hotel’s scratchy starched towels around herself. She makes a few faces in the mirror, plucks her eyebrows, flosses her teeth. After a quick survey of her armpits she pulls out a razor and shaves them, then her legs, then — because she's got time to kill and energy to burn — she shaves her pussy.

 

It's not that she's ashamed or disgusted by her body hair, it's just — Kyril might like it if she's bare. He might appreciate it. He might call her a good girl again.

 

She doesn't need him to. It's not a big deal. Really. But if he wanted—

 

She wouldn't mind.

 

After she's run out of parts to shave, she slips back into bed. For thirty dreadful minutes she truly _tries_ to sleep, but even with the ushanka, her long underwear, her flannel pajama pants, and her wool sweater — she's freezing, and anxious, and sleep evades her.

 

“Fuck it,” Rey whispers to the empty room.

 

She pulls on her jeans and her boots, then her pathetically insufficient jacket. The question of locking the hotel room gives her pause, but after a quick trip down to the reception and some very sheepishly performed pantomime to the downright hostile woman working the night shift, Rey returns with a key and locks the door behind her.

 

She hurries out into the night, hoping to burn through enough adrenaline to let her sleep. As she wanders — aimlessly, but with careful observation of street names so she can find her way back — she takes stock of Vologda.

 

It seems nice enough to her. She passes a couple of old wooden houses, painted an ethereal periwinkle blue with intricately carved window frames, darkened shops displaying delicate lace creations in their windows, kitschy-looking cafes that she thinks she’d like to visit in the daytime.

 

It's bitter cold outside, but somehow this cold doesn't seem as unbearable as that in the hotel room. The city is silent, somnolent, and yet she feels less lonely out here, marching through the heavy snow. Perhaps this is because roaming the streets in search of exhaustion is a far more normal activity for her than waiting for a man in a hotel room.

 

It feels like taking back a little control, reclaiming some sanity.

 

She passes a payphone on a street corner, and remembering the calling card Luke tucked into the inner breast pocket of her jacket, she tries to reach him. It takes forever, the operator demanding she key in an endless stream of numbers, and then for all her effort — the phone rings and rings until Luke’s answering machine picks up.

 

She gets the same results from Finn and Poe. It occurs to Rey, while she listens to her own voice on their shared answering machine, that she never moved her watch forward. She knows what time it is in New York, but she isn't exactly sure what time it is _here_. Is she still in the same time zone as Moscow, even? She has no idea.

 

All she knows is that it's after midnight here, no one in New York is answering their phone, and her legs are so cold they feel as though they're being stabbed with pins and needles.

 

“Fine,” she mutters, defeated, and turns back in the direction of the hotel.

 

. . .

 

 _At least they've really got the goods,_ Kyril thinks, as János directs his sons to display the various models of Kalashnikov automatic rifles they've brought. _Maybe this won't be a clusterfuck, after all._

 

“Mostly AKM’s from Albania,” János explains. “They're desperate to unload anything and everything these days. Desperate for capital. Sad state of affairs.”

 

“Lucky for you,” Kyril points out, placidly, as one of the sons — _Szabolcs, was it?_ — lifts the rifle in demonstration.

 

“ _And_ you,” János rejoins, a grim smile breaking out across his flushed face.

 

Suddenly, one of his heretofore mute brodyaga decides to pipe up. “You know, swine, you are essentially selling our _own_ weapons back to us—”

 

“Shut up,” seethes Kyril, shooting the man a dark look; it's as if the man cannot help himself, his glazed eyes and red face a testament to his overindulgence, probably in vodka, probably before he even arrived at the ryumochnaya.

 

“At a ridiculous inflated price, to boot! The Kalashnikov is the height of glorious _Soviet_ ingenuity! Not _Hungarian_. But you wouldn't understand that, typical Hungarians, ignoring common decency—”

 

“ _Baszd meg!_ ” barks one of the sons, and like that, he is aiming the rifle directly at the chest of Kyril’s man.

 

Kyril is on his feet in an instant, as are Mitaka, János, and Kyril's wisely silent third brodyaga. The atmosphere, already spiked with unspoken grudges, has careened towards hostile. It feels as if the rumbling echo of the young Hungarian’s words, clearly an infuriated curse, reverberates around the murky room — a sounding shot, a precursor to violence.

 

_Well, fuck._

 

“Tell your idiot son to put the gun down.” Kyril tries to remain calm, keep his voice steady, but he purses his lips anxiously out of habit and he can feel that old twitch under his left eye starting up.

 

“Tell _your_ idiot flunkey to apologize for his hateful slander,” János grounds out through clenched teeth.

 

And Kyril, he _knows_ better than to say what he says next. He _knows_ how this will end. But his pride, his relentless _pride_ —

 

“Why?” he jeers. “The brodyaga spoke no lies.”

 

“ _Мудак_ ,” says another son, bringing the barrel of his AKM around to point at Kyril's face. Kyril has his own pistol in his hand and aimed at the son before he can stop himself.

 

“You know,” János remarks, almost conversationally, the tension bleeding out of his frame as his grin returns, “we've heard about you, Kyril Ren—the fatherless Russian, a mad dog, a cold-blooded killer with no scruples—”

 

“Get to the point!” shouts Mitaka, whose eyes are so wide Kyril can see the whites around his irises. He's sweating and shaking, the poor bastard — he looks worse off than Kyril.

 

“Look who's joined the party!” János lets out an ugly barking laugh. “Alright then, _here's_ the point. We were afraid you might have some second thoughts about working with us, or that you might try to… _renegotiate_. Which is why we decided to bring reinforcements.”

 

As though on cue, the haggard old woman behind the bar leans back and pounds her meaty fist on the kitchen door.

 

It opens. Out they strut, six suited Russians, tattooed to hell just like Kyril. Much of the iconography visible on their hands, necks and faces is similar to Kyril and Mitaka’s — but there are some key differences, enough for Kyril to know they are _not_ with the Solntsevskaya Bratva.

 

Enough for him to know _exactly_ what Bratva they belong to.

 

The leering face of the last man to leave the kitchen is not one Kyril could easily forget: Boris Ivanov Morozov, a ringleader of the Tambovskaya and the man who, while they were imprisoned together, gave him the scar that bifurcates the right side of his face and chest .

 

“Hello, _Hanovich_ ,” he crows, in a singsong tone.

 

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

 

“ _Tambovskaya?_ ” Kyril roars. “You brought the fucking Tambov gang _here_ , to the same bar as _us?_ ”

 

János shrugs. “Wanted to make sure you played fair. You don't want to play fair? Maybe _they_ will.”

 

“You fucking traitors—” his drunk brodyaga moans.

 

It is at that exact moment, the last syllable of the brodyaga’s accusation still hanging in the air, that one of János's sons — _Levente, was it?_ — aims the rifle at the drunk man's head and blows it to pieces.

 

 _Боже мой,_ Kyril thinks as he reacts on instinct, overturning a nearby table and diving behind it. A deafening hail of bullets shreds the wood all around him; splintered pieces rain down. He counts to five, double checks that his pistol's safety is unengaged and his hammer uncocked, makes the sign of the cross, and braces himself for what he must do.

 

 _Fuck going smoothly. I'll be lucky to make it out of this bar alive._ This is the last thought he has before he rises.

 

. . .

 

Although worry is starting to gnaw at her by the time Rey gets comfortable in the hotel bed — well over an hour has passed, according to her wristwatch — she reassures herself that Kyril _basically_ promised to return.

 

The walk has helped to douse some of her raging anxiety, and she's warm — she’s discovered a space heater in the room’s ancient teak armoire. It sits on the nightstand now, its coils glowing a fiery orange.

 

 _He said he'll tell you anything you want to know,_ she reminds herself.

 

Her mind begins to ease itself into the shadowy hinterland of slumber.

 

_He's going to come back. He said so._

 

. . .

 

He's clipped by a bullet in his left flank almost immediately and he takes a couple of savage blows from János’ fists, but Kyril _does_ manage to take out three of the Tambovskaya while Mitaka, a nervous man but stalwart when the shit really hits the fan, puts down another two. They’ve lost their other brodyaga, however, and Kyril is guessing from the pool of blood gathering around one of the sons lying prostrate — _Ákos, was it?_ — that _he's_ probably not going to make it either.

 

“Picsába! Fogd a fegyvereket és induljunk!” János yells at the two still standing as he struggles to heave his dying son over his shoulder.

 

The ryumochnaya is in ruins — littered with the bodies of men from both gangs, dripping with alcohol that has exploded out of shattered bottles, blood and viscera splattered everywhere.

 

Kyril is torn between dealing with the Hungarians, who are shoving the Kalashnikovs back into their nylon duffel bags, and going after Boris Ivanov Morozov, who turned and fled through the kitchen door when he saw the tide turning against him and his men.

 

“Go,” whispers Mitaka, solemn and ashen-faced. “I'll deal with them.”

 

_Друг познаётся в беде. Good old Mitaka._

 

Kyril doesn't hesitate any longer; he nods, and hurls himself behind the bullet-ridden bar, through the filthy, narrow kitchen, and into the dark hallway at its other end, which leads away from the ryumochnaya.

 

By the time he charges up a stairwell, taking the steps two at a time and pummeling his bullet wound in an effort to keep his mind sharp, he _knows_ he's too late. He's moved too slowly, waited too long to give chase.

 

He bursts through another heavy steel door, identical to the one he entered on the opposite side of the building, only to discover the inevitable: Morozov is long gone.

 

Kyril stumbles and collapses to his knees in the snow, his blood leaving a corona of crimson droplets around him. He stares at serene, snow-buried tableaux — a parking lot full of empty cars, a quiet playground, the flickering blue lights in the windows of people safe in their homes.

 

 _Fuck,_ he thinks.

 

. . .

 

“Rey. Up. Now.”

 

This is what Rey wakes to — a barked order that is beyond her befuddled mind’s ability to comprehend.

 

“Huh?” she asks, rubbing the sand from her tear ducts. Kyril is storming around the hotel room, and by the time Rey has stopped blinking, her eyes adjusting slowly to the glaring overhead light, he already has her canvas backpack slung over his shoulders.

 

“Irena,” he says. His teeth are bared, like a cornered animal and as she watches, he brings a fist up to pound at his left side. His knuckles come away bloody. “Milaya. Sweet girl. Get out of that _fucking_ bed and put your shoes on. _Now_.”

 

He looks half-crazed, lurching towards her to yank the covers back. He hands Rey her Doc Martens.

 

“Oh—okay,” she stammers.

 

Her laces aren't even tied yet when his hand is around her bicep, a vice-like grip pulling her up out of the bed.

 

“Wait, my coat, I'm still in my pajamas—”

 

“I have your clothes, it's time to go,” he growls, and shoves her bomber jacket at her with his free hand. She hurriedly pulls it on while he picks up his suitcase and then they are moving, striding down the hallway so quickly that Rey must jog to keep Kyril from wresting her arm clean off her body, a warped reflection of their earlier journey down this same hallway —

 

“What's going on?” she finally finds the wherewithal to demand, as Kyril tugs her down the grand staircase and through the lobby. He doesn't bother with speaking to the receptionist, nor returning his key.

 

 _He's not wearing his coat or gloves,_ she realizes.

 

“Kyril?” she prompts, her voice raising in pitch as her panic ticks up several notches. “What the _fuck_ is going on?”

 

But he says nothing, merely drags her out the door and through the snow, Rey stumbling along beside him, until they reach his car. He releases her to toss their bags onto the back seat, and she's halfway inside the car herself, one foot in the passenger seat footwell, when she hears—

 

_“Hanovich!”_

 

. . .

 

Morozov has not fled into the night to lick his wounds, after all. He's gone to gather backup and he stands now on the street in front of the hotel. How he found them, Kyril cannot say. Perhaps the woman in the lobby squealed on him, perhaps they have been following him since he left Moscow.

 

Three more men pile out of Morozov’s gleaming Mercedes and another four stroll up to join him from a nearby SUV.

 

Eight Tambovskaya against him and Rey. Kyril does not like those odds.

 

Everything happens in slow motion and all at once — this time, Kyril does not wait to see what they will do. He pulls his pistol from its holster at his ribs, and having left the safety off, he cocks the hammer and opens fire at the Tambovs.

 

A returning storm of gunfire has him shoving Rey behind his body, herding her back and down behind the hood of his car. Another bullet grazes his left shoulder and he groans as searing pain explodes across his upper arm.

 

_Fuck._

 

He makes himself stand and shoot, managing to hit three of them before the men begin to advance, forcing him back down behind the hood.

 

It occurs to him then, as bullets land or ricochet wildly all around him and Rey, that this is about to be very insufficient cover.

 

When he twists to check on her, she has an expression on her face that he has never seen a woman wear before. She has finally snapped from her sleepy daze and she looks — for lack of a better word — fucking _feral_.

 

He knows it's probably fear, her instinctual reaction to danger being fight instead of flight — _just_   _like him, she's beyond perfect_  — but he can't help but marvel at how lovely she looks.

 

“We can't stay here,” she hisses, and he would roll his eyes at the obviousness of this statement, if he weren't in awe of her. Without asking his permission, she wrenches the gun from his hand, stands, and fires off several shots. She tosses the gun into the snow with a shrill war-cry, then sidles around Kyril to charge towards the men.

 

“Rey, no!” Kyril cries, attempting to grab her ankles, but she's so fast, sprinting through the snow—

 

By his estimate, there's three men left in action, the others grievously wounded or dead. Rey throws a punch at the nearest one.

 

_Fuck. If something happens to her, if they hurt her, if I lose her—_

 

Kyril knows for a fact that his cartridge is empty and his surplus rounds are in the trunk, too far for him to reach.

 

He still has a knife, though. He's drawn it and is pushing himself up with the help of his car’s fender, ready to move towards the man struggling with Rey, when he processes what he's seeing. The man, not quite Kyril's height but close and very nearly as muscular — is _struggling_ with Rey.

 

She's got both fists up and when he swings one of his heavy arms, she ducks and dodges out of his wingspan with ease, then darts in close to deliver a hit to his midsection or face, her punches landing each time with a heavy 'thud.’ His nose is gushing blood and he's gripping his ribs protectively — Kyril wonders if she's broken one.

 

 _She's kicking his ass,_ he realizes. She's beautiful, beatific in her anger, like nothing he has ever seen, and he has the insane urge to just stand there and gawk as the waifish, delicate girl boxes circles around the hulking Tambov brute.

 

He hears a low, appreciative grunt. When Kyril glances around, he finds its source — Morozov is also watching. Morozov licks his lips, and takes a step towards her.

 

 _That's it,_ Kyril thinks. _For that—not my face, not our opposing allegiances—you must die._

 

While the two remaining Tambov men stand frozen, watching the fight unfold and laughing with disbelief, Kyril ducks back behind the car. He circumvents it while crouching and when he stands, he is behind them. He fells the nameless Tambov member with a knife buried deep in the man's kidney.

 

Morozov is trickier.

 

“You're bleeding, _Hanovich_ ,” he taunts, spinning away from Kyril's knife and pulling a pistol from an ankle holster. “You let yourself get shot just like you let me rip open your ugly face. Weak.”

 

Kyril advances, attempting to grab the pistol from Morozov’s hand.

 

But then Morozov is aiming the gun, Morozov is cackling victoriously, Morozov—

 

A loud shot rings out.

 

Morozov falls to his knees, gasping. He brings one hand to his neck, from which a geyser of blood has begun to flow.

 

Another shot, and he falls face-forward into the snow. He doesn't move again.

 

When Kyril looks back to where the shot must have come from, the sight that greets him takes his breath away. Rey stands over the gargantuan body of the man she was fighting, a knife — _his? Was he holding one before? Did he pull it on her and she took it from him?_ — is planted in his chest. She holds the man's pistol in her trembling hands.

 

A dark bruise has started to bloom across her swollen right eye, but otherwise, she appears unharmed.

 

“Irenushka,” he murmurs, and reaches for her. _What have I done to you?_ He wants to ask her, but he can't seem to form the words, everything has begun to hurt so much—

 

Rey lets out a pitiful wail and stumbles into his arms, hot tears soaking the front of his shirt when she buries her face in his chest.

 

. . .

 

Kyril's Mercedes is perforated with bullet holes, the back windows completely shattered. The icy wind whistles through the car as Rey clumsily navigates them out of town, towards the highway.

 

Her right arm stings where a bullet glanced it, and her right eye is throbbing from a solid punch the goon landed.

 

 _But you're okay,_ she reminds herself. _You're alive. And he didn't cut you._

 

“Where to?” Her voice is small and scared, the rush of savage momentum that fueled what she's just done has receded, and she hazards a quick glance at Kyril. He's pale, but then, he was pale before. He lets his head fall back against the passenger seat headrest for a moment.

 

“Turn left here,” he instructs, with a pained groan. The next few minutes are occupied by his directions and her driving, and when he has steered them back to the M8 highway, he says, “Go north.”

 

“Are you sure?” she asks, idling before the entrance ramp. “Shouldn't we go back to Moscow?”

 

“You want to find your family in Arkhangelsk. You'll need help. And I find myself in need of a vacation,” mutters Kyril. He raps his blood-crusted knuckles against his ribs. “Go north.”

 

Rey shivers, from the sharp early morning air and from her rising alarm. She can't just let this go on between them, not without asking _something_ , not without getting some answers. What she did back there, what she's gotten herself into — it terrifies her.

 

“Kyril—that was—insane. I just—this is _insane_ ,” she croaks. “What—please tell me what's going on. Who _are_ you?”

 

He sighs. “You dont know? I know _you_. I thought you were Vasilisa, but _now_ I understand.”

 

“What?”

 

A small twitch of his lips, and his eyes slide over to look at her. They're a little unfocused.

 

“Maslenitsa.”

 

“Kyril, we need to take you to a hospital.”

 

“No. No hospitals.” He shakes his head, and raises one bloody hand, which he lays over hers on the steering wheel. “Марена. Maslenitsa. The goddess of winter’s death. And rebirth. And dreams. Is this a dream, Maslenitsa? Have I dreamt you?”

 

“I'm not—”

 

“You saved my life. A life for a life. The goddess of winter's death must go north—she must bring spring and new life to this frozen country.”

 

Rey is torn between a strange sense of elation at his praise, and sickening worry over his slurred voice, his nonsensical train of thought. His eyes slip shut, and his body goes slack. His hand falls into her lap.

 

“Please,” she begs, pulling the ushanka from her head and placing it on Kyril's in a desperate bid to ease his suffering. He's breathing, but his breaths are shallow, and wheezing. Rey does not move the car — she sits there staring at the on-ramp, hemmed in by shoveled piles of snow cast in an orange tint by the highway streetlights.

 

There are too many choices. Too much is being asked of her, and she can feel the firm grasp she usually has on her fear beginning to slip — a wave of terror washes over her.

 

_Go to Moscow, leave him on the doorstep of a hospital, buy the next ticket out here before you get yourself in any more trouble. Before someone tells the police that you killed two men on the front lawn of a hotel in Vologda. With your record, who knows what the consequences will be?_

But—she's come so far. And she's so close, just another day or two’s worth of driving.

 

And she can't leave him.

 

 _I'm invested in this,_ she thinks, with a jolt. _I don't know if I can walk away from him now. I don't think I would, even if I could._

 

 _Okay,_ Rey says to herself, as Kyril slumps against the window. She shifts gears, and heads onto the highway. _You're okay. No one stabbed you, just some punches and a bullet wound that won't even need stitches. You're okay. Get yourself somewhere safe—you and Kyril can figure this all out. Together._

_You're okay. You're okay. You're okay._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I kind of went to town on this chapter.
> 
> Translations!
> 
> “Ez az a fickó? Nem valami nagy szám."  
>  **This is the guy? I'm not impressed.**
> 
> “Úgy néz ki, mint egy veszett kutya. Nem kellett volna idehívnunk a többieket. Ennek rossz vége lesz.”  
>  **He looks like a mad dog—we shouldn't have brought the others here. This is going to end badly.**
> 
> “Kussolj te fasz, és ne legyél tahó. Beszélj oroszul."  
>  **Shut up, dick, and don't be rude—speak Russian.**
> 
> "Baszd meg!”  
>  **Fuck you!**
> 
> "Picsába! Fogd a fegyvereket és induljunk!"  
>  **Fuck! Get the guns, let's go!**
> 
> "Мудак." _[Mudak.]_  
>  **Asshole.**
> 
> "Боже мой." _[Bozhe moy.]_  
>  **My God./Dear me.**
> 
> "Друг познаётся в беде." _[Drug poznayotsya v bede.]_  
>  **A friend in need's a friend indeed. (That's the spirit of the proverb, if not the literal translation.)**
> 
> Links!
> 
> Who is [Belobog](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belobog)? [Chernobog](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobog)? [Maslenitsa/Марена](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marzanna)? Other [Slavic pagan deities](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deities_of_Slavic_religion)?
> 
>  
> 
> [Saint Cyril?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saints_Cyril_and_Methodius)
> 
>  
> 
> What was the [Eastern Bloc](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc)?
> 
> What was up with [East Berlin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Berlin), its [wall](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall), and the main entry point for westerners, [Checkpoint Charlie](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkpoint_Charlie)?
> 
> A photo of Checkpoint Charlie from the [Eastern side](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Checkpoint_Charlie%2C_East_Berlin%2C_February_1975.jpg/640px-Checkpoint_Charlie%2C_East_Berlin%2C_February_1975.jpg).
> 
> And a first-hand account of [traveling](https://mobile.nytimes.com/1982/09/05/travel/through-the-wall-to-east-berlin.html) from West to East Berlin.
> 
> What was [education](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_East_Germany) like in East Germany?
> 
> What's a [ryumochnaya](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/5-oclock-somewhere-russia-dive-bar_b_8179662)? (I think the closest equivalent we have in the US would be like a speakeasy/dive bar. They sound awesome, TBH.)
> 
> What's a [balalaika](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balalaika)?
> 
> Is the accordion Russian? Yes, when you call it a [garmonika](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garmon)!
> 
> A brief overview of international [arms trafficking](http://origins.osu.edu/article/merchants-death-international-traffic-arms/page/0/1). Some [historical perspective](https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21697019-answer-often-serbia-croatia-or-bulgaria-ask-not-whom-ak-47s-flow) on former Yugoslavia and the Balkans' relationship with the Kalashnikov.
> 
> Speaking of, what was happening in [Albania in the 1990's](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_post-Communist_Albania)?
> 
> Again, for the record, I love Hungary and Hungarians. I drew Kyril's prejudices from [here](https://europeisnotdead.com/video/images-of-europe/european-stereotypes/).
> 
> What exactly _is_ the [Hungarian language](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_language)?
> 
> What's a [Makarov pistol](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makarov_pistol)? Kalashnikov is the catchall name for the rifle; what's the difference between the [AK-47](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47) and the [AKM](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKM)?
> 
> Who are the [Tambovskaya Bratva](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambovskaya_Bratva)?
> 
> Name meanings!
> 
> [Boris/Borya](http://www.babynames.net/names/borya) refers to "battle" or "war", from the Russian "борьба." According to this [site](https://todiscoverrussia.com/top-20-most-common-russian-family-names-and-their-meaning/), Morozov "has to do with cold weather," and Smyrnoi means "meek."
> 
> Last but _not_ least, [info](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_names) about Hungarian names!
> 
> Whew okay, that's all I've got. Thanks for reading!


	4. то, что не может быть ни невысказанным, ни неслыханным

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that which can be neither unsaid nor unheard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> However you have consumed this story so far — with comments, kudos, subscriptions, Tumblr likes or reblogs or asks — or just reading along — I am really, really grateful for all of it! Thank you so much. ❤
> 
> And of course, as ever, posting this beast of a chapter in the coherent form you see below would not even be possible without [Kachenka](http://luminousreylo.tumblr.com), who is just the best!
> 
> _P.S. I gave Kyril some more tattoos in this chapter! Let's just say that in chapter one he was only studying his favorite tattoos, not all of them._

When Kyril emerges from his stupor, he's unsure how long he's slept. It's still dark, and they're still heading north on the M8. He turns his head just enough to check the digital clock above the radio — in blinking red it reads: _01:30_. He relaxes back into the seat, where he has been curled up awkwardly, facing away from Rey.

 

His hulking frame feels too big for his skin. Or perhaps it is his skin which is too tight? The wind howls and slices into the exposed, abraded wound at his shoulder with its frigid claws, making him shiver despite the hot air blasting from the vents.

 

Everything hurts.

 

For a few minutes, he gives himself over to watching the snowy firs and spruces race across the window — grey, sibylline silhouettes in the night.

 

Judging by the reflective highway signs that glow an eerie white in the Mercedes’ high beams, they haven't gotten very far. This is not a surprise to him, considering the trepidation with which Rey handled the car as they were leaving Vologda.

 

 _Fuck_ , he thinks. _How could I have been so stupid? I should have left her alone—she doesn't deserve this. I never should have gone back to the hotel. I should have left her in Rostov. I should have just told her to wait on the side of the highway for one of the marshrutkas that circulate between Moscow and Vologda every day—_

_But I couldn't. I couldn't._

 

_I'm glad I didn't leave you, and I don't care if it's wrong. You were so beautiful, pummeling that man. You saved my life._

_I wanted to fuck you in the snow next to his corpse._

 

“I can practically _hear_ you thinking,” she says in a hushed tone.

 

He's glad she can't hear his precise thoughts, though.

 

“Pull over,” he tells her, shifting around in his seat. “I'm ready to drive.”

_I want to kneel at your feet, and drink from your honeyed cunt._

“I don't think—”

 

_I want to keep you in my bed until you're too sated and tired to even crawl away, until you cry tears of joy at how good I make you feel._

 

“Rey. What you've been through—let me take care of this, okay? Pull over,” he insists. He needs to drive, needs a distraction from these intrusive thoughts that have established dominion in his mind. With a long-suffering sigh, she does as he's asked.

 

 _I want to save you. I want you to save me. I don't think I care which_.

 

She won't meet his eyes as they pass around the front of the Mercedes. Fear seizes him, sharper than the Siberian air, and he reaches for her wrist before she can slip inside, tugging her back to him.

 

Rey gives a startled little meep, but acquiesces when he spins her, wrapping her up in his arms and twining his body around hers. He leans in close, nuzzles against her neck and breathes in the scent of her.

 

“I'm okay,” she whispers, against his matted hair, but her voice cracks, and her hands hang limp at her sides. She tries again, more firmly: “I'm okay.”

 

“Good,” he says, matching her soft intonation. “I'm not. We're going to stop in the next town we pass. I need to find an аптека.”

 

“A what?”

 

This is good. Conversation—something to talk about besides the trauma of the past few hours, besides his indecent thoughts.

 

“A pharmacy,” he amends.

 

He feels her nod against his shoulder. This is good, and if it's all she'll give him then he can content himself with just this, but he _wonders_ —

 

He tilts his head, and places a chaste kiss against her cheek. She doesn't reprimand him, doesn't refuse him, but she _does_ push at his chest — gently, mindful of his injuries — and wriggle out of his arms when he loosens his grip.

 

And she still won't meet his gaze.

 

_Fuck._

 

Facing her head on, he's able to get a good look at her eye — it's bloodshot, and the thin skin below it is a mottled puce and violet. _Fuck fuck fuck._

 

She wears a wan smile and seems to be making an intense study of his chest. And then — she must _just_ notice, for the first time, the shredded fabric of his shirt and jacket where the bullets tore past and ripped through the skin. Rey gasps, and stretches her hand out—

 

“It's fine,” he snaps, taking a step back. If she pulls at his tattered clothes, she's going to see the tattoos.

 

He strongly suspects — by her downcast gaze, by the pallor of her face — that Rey is not, in fact, okay. She's certainly not ready to see _them_ yet. Not here, not now.

 

_When the time comes, I want you to lay your mouth on these tattoos, the testimony to my sins, and tell me you do not fear me._

 

“Come on.” He pivots, then stomps to the driver side door. “Let's get going.”

 

She complies. Once seated, she curls her body up in a tight huddle facing the window. He wants to comfort her, but—

 

What is there to be said, after what she's just experienced?

 

The first time that Kyril killed someone for the Solntsevskaya, he vomited afterwards and his hands had been shaking so badly that Snoke, who'd ordered him to do the deed, had been forced to drive him home. He'd suggested that Kyril get drunk and then laid and left him on the doorstep of his apartment building, sick running down the front of his jacket and trying desperately not to cry. He doubts that advice will be of much use or comfort to Rey.

 

He uses the demands of driving to center himself, brace against the pain and the slippery nature of his musings — he must focus on only this, on overcorrecting for the draft blowing his car around and on checking the rear view mirror obsessively lest one of the Tambovskaya be trailing them.

 

Before long, he starts seeing the signs for Chekshino, a sleepy little farming town situated just off the highway. He takes the exit, and rolls the battered, bullet-pocked Mercedes at a leisurely pace down the darkened main avenue. _It's probably too much to ask,_ he thinks, _that a town this insubstantial have a twenty-four hour pharmacy._ The central square, once he reaches it, isn't much more than a dozen square meters of plaza surrounded by the usual red brick administrative buildings, a gold-domed church at its ingress point.

 

Kyril supposes that along with seeing the permanently inked evidence of his misdeeds, it's very likely that Rey is _not_ prepared to break into and burgle a pharmacy. He wonders if he can leave her somewhere, perhaps park the car far enough away that she doesn't see...

 

But he catches sight of it, down the road — by some miracle of fate or higher power — the glowing neon green cross that marks a pharmacy.

 

The old man working the graveyard shift is obstinately incurious about why Kyril might need fluoroquinolone, paracetamol, sterile gauze, surgical needles and surgical thread at two o’clock in the morning. He keeps his eyes trained on the counter, and makes no mention of the dried blood on Kyril's tattooed knuckles.

 

“How much?” Kyril asks.

 

But he just shakes his head, never lifting his eyes. “I don't want any trouble. Please go.”

 

Back in the car, Kyril places the plastic bag of supplies on the console between them. He stares at the back of Rey's head. She's sniffling softly, and when he leans forward in an attempt to see her face, he's struck fresh by guilt.

 

She's been crying while he was in the pharmacy.

 

“Milaya,” he says, no more than a breathy sigh. “Please—”

 

“I'm okay,” she repeats, monotone, a mantra intended to ward him off.

 

And Kyril, he knows he deserves this, but it stings him all the same. His head feels too heavy, weighed down by the terrible events he has incited, so he rests it on the steering wheel for a moment.

 

_I have a greedy heart, and I want you to want me—to need me. But you cannot even look at me._

 

He tries to swallow down the ache in his throat; he focuses, perhaps ironically, on the searing throb where the bullets grazed his skin. They're not bleeding now — none of his major arteries were hit, and the Tambov were using high-velocity rifles whose ammunition did not shatter like shrapnel against his skin, but rather slashed through it. Back at the ryumochnaya, he'd bound the gash at his side with a kitchen towel and some duct tape, before he went to retrieve Rey. The wound at his shoulder is insubstantial, comparatively.

 

 _I will be fine_ , he thinks _. I will survive this as I have everything else. Will you?_

 

She remains silent, and an apology seems too meager a pittance to rectify the damage he has done, so he starts the car, and turns down one of the residential streets.

 

If he was worried she wouldn't like his pharmacy contingency plan, he's without doubt that she will not approve of what must happen next.

 

They cannot continue north in this car. The wind ripping through it, for one thing, is giving Kyril a headache. And for another, she's freezing — he can see her trembling, hear her teeth clacking, although she's been doing her best to hide it. And, well, it's a fucking eyesore. A very suspicious eyesore — the kind that might inspire even the most fraudulent and corrupt of police officers to stop them, to ask them questions.

 

This is obviously unacceptable.

 

Kyril scans the streets as he cruises up one, turns two corners, and heads down the next. Most people are wise enough to store their vehicles in a locked garage behind the house, an especially prudent choice in these temperatures, but there's got to be at least one idiot in Chekshino—

 

And there it is, at the dead-end of the fourth street they pass down — a Lada Vaz-2101, boxy and unpretentious, painted a hideous shade of chartreuse. It sits directly under the sodium-orange halo of a streetlight, half-buried under the night's fresh snow drifts.

 

Absently, Kyril speculates about just how drunk its driver must have been when he left it like this — in such an open invitation to thieves. He parks behind it.

 

“Rey,” he says, in as gentle and mild a tone as he can. _Trust me again, just a little while longer._

 

She unfurls her body and stares straight ahead at the back window of the Lada.

 

“We can't stay in this car,” he explains. “It's not safe.”

 

“Because of what I've done?” He can barely hear the question, for how quietly she poses it.

 

“What _we've_ done,” he corrects.

 

“Are we going to steal that car?”

 

_I would steal the kremlin in Moscow from Yeltsin himself for you, Maslenitsa._

 

“It's called the Kopyeka, because it's so cheap and commonplace. Easily replaced,” he demurs.

 

“Kyril.”

 

“ _I'm_ going to steal it. You're going to wait here until I’m finished, and then bring our bags.”

 

Kyril shoves the door open and heaves himself out before she can protest.

 

From his trunk he retrieves a thin piece of wire he hasn't used in so long he was _almost_ worried he didn't have it anymore. He strides up to the driver's door of the Lada, takes a casual survey of the dark and silent houses all around, then dips the wire between the glass of the window and the metal of the door. There is a moment of fishing around before he feels the curved end of the wire _catch_. Kyril yanks it upwards.

 

He has a kind of morbid satisfaction when the locking mechanism inside pops up. This was one of his earliest tricks, carjacking — something he learned to do quite well in East Berlin — because it impressed and amused his superiors in the Bratva.

 

He peeks back at Rey. She's still seated in the car, staring at him with an inscrutable face and shuttered eyes.

 

_Add it to the list of things you'll have to come clean about._

 

He folds himself up in the Lada's comically small driver's seat and considers taking the time to unscrew each of the bolts that holds the plastic cover over its steering column. Then he recalls how Rey has been trying to muffle the sound of her teeth chattering for the past half hour. He unsheathes his knife, ignoring the remnants of rust-colored blood still sticking to the hilt — and with the blade wedged between the overlapping pieces of the plastic shell, he gives a mighty jerk.

 

It comes away with a groan and he tosses the ruined plastic into the backseat. For a moment he inspects the exposed wires. Then, with great care, he extracts the ones he needs.

 

He's just about to strip them when he's startled by a rapid tapping at the window.

 

It’s Rey, holding their bags. Her voice is muffled when she tells him, through the glass, “It’s too cold in your car. Let me in.”

 

He leans over to unlock the door, and once she's settled inside, bags in the back, he speaks.

 

“I didn't want you to be a part of this.”

 

“ _Really_ , Kyril? _This_? After—”

 

“Yes,” he cuts her off, with a shake of his head. “Foolish of me.”

 

_I am a fool for you. How have you done this to me, in just twenty-four hours?_

 

Kyril returns his attention to the wires, and now he can feel the heat of her eyes on him. It's what he's wanted since he woke up, but _now_ it is _he_ who can't look at _her_ , he needs to _focus_ —

 

He can do this. It’s been a while, but Ladas are easy, especially old ones like this. Red, for the battery and ignition. Yellow, for the starter. Carefully, with his knife, he cuts away their rubber casing and twists the copper strands of the battery and ignition. Then, holding those wires in one hand and the starter wire in the other — both by the remaining rubber — he strikes them together.

 

The engine roars to life. Kyril presses his foot on the gas to ensure it continues turning over. When its roar softens to a droning purr, he swipes at the Lada’s climate controls until cold air begins to gust from the vents.

 

“It will be warm in a moment,” he assures her, in lieu of the mea culpa she deserves.

 

She's gaping at him again, like she sometimes does. “Did—you—I just—”

 

Kyril thinks about her sitting in his parked Mercedes outside that pharmacy, crying. Because she was free of him, momentarily — because she is _frightened_ of him, in all likelihood.

 

“There are buses,” he confesses under his breath.

 

“Huh?”

 

“If—you want to go to Arkhangelsk, or back to Moscow, without me. There are buses that run along the M8. They'll stop for you, if you wave them down. They're safe, and clean. If you find a babushka inside and sit down next to her, she’ll look after you.”

 

He waits. _Please_ , he prays, _understand what I am offering._ Choose _me. Not because there isn't any other choice, or because I am the lesser of two evils. Just because you feel this_ —thing— _between us, as I do._ Silently, he wills it.

 

“That's not what you told me before,” she accuses, eyes narrowed, breathing heavy.

 

“Yes,” he says, nodding at her. “I am—a selfish man.”

 

“Are the police going to come looking for me?”

 

She looks to be on the verge of a meltdown — lips quivering, eyes shining, brows drawn together. Kyril wants to make this offer without any attempt to sway her, but... he is not immune to her, doesn't think he ever _could_ be, so—

 

He snatches up her icy hands, rubbing them between his. She lets him, watching as hers disappear in his warm, tight grasp.

 

“ _No_ , Irenushka. The police are useless. Anyone who saw what happened tonight—they won't speak to the police, for fear that _they_ might be affiliated with one gang or the other. No, what you must stay alert for is members of the Tambovskaya. They may try to find you. They will definitely be trying to find me.”

 

_But I would keep you safe, if you stayed._

 

“But—how would they? Didn't they all—” She swallows. “Y’know, die?”

 

“I can’t be certain of that,” he sighs. Now, _now_ she is looking at him, and he could drown in those lovely green eyes—

 

“You said you would tell me anything I wanted to know. About you, about— _this_.” She gestures to the Lada’s hanging wires. “Does that offer still stand?”

 

“Yes,” he says, barely daring to _hope_ —

 

“Okay.” Her eyes flick down to his lips, then back to meet his. “Then let's go.”

 

. . .

 

In a graffitied, mildewy gas station bathroom a few kilometers up the road, he peels off his ruined shirt. He cleans his torn flesh with a bar of soap he's purchased in the station's convenience store, then sterilizes it with a bottle of vodka, also newly acquired. As best he can, bellowing against the leather belt he has clenched between his teeth, he stitches together the raw, freshly reopened edges of the long gash on his side.

 

The one at his shoulder is easier — it is shallow, and needs only a few stitches — and more difficult — because he must reach all the way across his own broad chest to sew them.

 

He is sorely tempted to call out to Rey, who is sitting in the idling Lada just outside the steel door, and ask her for help.

 

 _Fix me,_ he could plead. _Put me back together, but right this time. How I should've been._

 

He does not.

 

. . .

 

Dressed in a fresh suit — another of his acquisitions from Snoke's tailor — and a black cotton t-shirt, Kyril drives for hours. He switches off with Rey a few times, but even as a passenger he cannot relax, cannot stop checking the mirrors and studying the occupants of the passing cars. He feels delirious with wired exhaustion, exacerbated by the painkillers and antibiotics he’s downed.

 

Rey's wounds required no stitches and were easily cleaned, although the sleeve of her leather jacket will forever bare a slash where the bullet glanced it. Thanks to their periodic stops to scoop up handfuls of snow, they've managed to keep the swelling down on her eye.

 

Still, he insists on her taking antibiotics as well, and despite the cans upon cans of energy drinks and several bags of sugary candy they've gone through — he can _see_ , plain as day, in her bloodshot eyes, in her slumped posture, that the strain of everything is wearing her down.

 

When the sun has completed its journey across the sky — having risen and fallen in a low arc across the windshield as they've traveled ever further north — he makes a decision.

 

What they need is _time_. If she is willing to continue trusting him, then the least he can do is give her a safe, quiet place; somewhere they can process everything that has happened. Lay low, figure out what this _is_ between them — what it might be.

 

There's no proper sunset. The weak winter sun just slips below the trees in the afternoon, after which twilight's shadows lengthen and deepen until everything is tinted an electric sapphire. The whole world feels unearthly at this hour, as though it belongs to another, more mystical universe than the one he has been inhabiting all his life.

 

He chooses a random exit, not caring where they end up as long as it's away from the cities. Rey notices of course, and he catches her giving him a puzzled look. But she says nothing, and returns to staring out at the royal blue tinted landscape.

 

_Trust me, Maslenitsa. I will keep you safe._

 

He takes turn after turn on a rural highway headed west, passing the twinkling lights of a tiny village here and there, until the highway becomes a two-lane road. Still he drives, going in whichever direction he thinks will take them somewhere remote — mostly north. Grey concrete falls away to rock-strewn dirt under his high beams. Still he drives. The village sightings diminish, then cease — spectral evergreens rise up to wall in the little road they rumble over. When revealed by the Lada's glaring headlights he observes that their prickly green boughs are weighed down by heavy vestments of undisturbed snow.

 

Still he drives.

 

The dirt becomes a set of muddy tire ruts in the snow — becomes fresh white powder that the Lada struggles to cut through.

 

They are in the taiga _proper_ now, and in truth — Kyril has no idea where the closest human civilization is anymore. Now that they're here, he doesn't really know what they're going to do, hasn't fully thought this through, thinks maybe they could curl up together in the match box of a back seat if needs be.

 

_Would you sleep on my lap, milaya, like a docile kitten? Would you bounce on my cock to keep us both warm, if I asked you very nicely?_

 

But then he spots it.

 

A dacha, built back from the road — _are we even on a road anymore?_ he wonders — nearly hidden between the trees.

 

_Perfect._

 

He gets as close as he can and cuts the engine.

 

“Kyril,” Rey starts, but she hesitates, perhaps afraid to ask, perhaps afraid of the answer. “Where—are we?”

 

“Nowhere,” he tells her, and exits the car.

 

. . .

 

The dacha, a semi-rural cottage to which families retreat in the fleeting halcyon days of spring and summer, is an institution of Russian life. Kyril's own family had a relatively opulent dacha in the exerbs of Moscow, an hour away from their flat — a beautiful, airy house built in the gothic style, with high turrets and ornately carved vergeboards on its many gables, all in shades of amaranthine and indigo. It was one of the few aspects of Russian life his mother ever came to truly love.

 

Kyril can still remember how she'd hum along merrily to her American pop music cassettes as she drove him and his father out to the dacha when he was a small boy, before the Cold War became as frozen as their dissolving marriage and they sent him away. Leia rarely had time to spare for holidays; many summers they were lucky to steal her away from her work for an entire week — but she was so _happy_ , once they got there. She’d putter around the garden they paid people to maintain, fussing over the cucumbers and tomatoes, and at night she'd read Tolkien or Verne to young Veniamin — Ben, to her, always Ben.

 

Those dachniki days are probably his happiest memories of childhood.

 

 _This dacha is a much humbler affair,_ he reflects, as he studies it by the light of the full moon. It's a simple A-frame, with a shingled roof that extends down almost to the forest floor, and a row of double-paned windows across its front. A bay window above the oaken front door belongs to what _must_ be a cramped attic space. Its wooden sides are painted a cheery cardinal red, and although it _is_ simple, the fresh coat of paint on the ivory trim attests to the care its owners have taken to maintain it.

 

 _Perfect_ , Kyril thinks again. He marches through the knee-high snow until he reaches one of the windows, then cups his hands against the glass so he can see inside.

 

Empty, dark, and silent — as he expected.

 

Behind him, he can hear Rey finally open her door. She grunts as she slogs her way towards him. He turns to watch her approach. She is using the tracks he has left behind, carefully hopping from one deep hole to the next. Each leg is swallowed up to her lower thigh by the snow. She is beguiling to him; in the silvery moonlight, skin aglow and lips parted, his ushanka framing her face in soft grey fur — she is like a hibernal goddess, come to grace him with her presence.

 

“Is this—your home?” she asks, when she reaches the window, panting a little from the effort she's expended.

 

He looks around. They're in the center of a small clearing, ringed by peeling white birches and soaring larch trees whose bare branches are laden with precarious loads of snow. Prickly needled juniper bushes form a natural barrier around the dacha; this place is so remote the owners haven't even _bothered_ with the customary high steel fence.

 

It is as if it has been purposefully built at the end of the world, just for them. And this is their best option, the only one, really: it's completely dark now, save for the moon.

 

“It's— _not_ , is it? Yours?” Rey prompts.

 

“No,” he says. He steps towards her. “But we need to rest, and heal. This is a summer home—these people won't be using this house for months. And—we'll leave it how we found it.”

 

She scrunches her nose, eyes darting between him and the house. Finally, she sighs — and nods.

 

_Good girl._

 

The front door is too solid for him to force open but there's a kitchen window in the back that gives when he applies enough pressure. With a foot in the basket of his hands, he sends Rey up and through the window, tumbling into the house. By the time he starts the generator and returns to the front, she's already there, leaning on the open door.

 

“Success,” she says, offering him a shy smile.

 

 _I wish I could have carried you across the threshold in my arms,_ he thinks, counting the freckles dusted across her cheeks. _Like you were mine, to have and to hold._

 

He allows himself this — staring at her as she stands waiting for him in the doorway of a homey little dacha, just like he'd fantasized — for only a minute. Any longer and he might lose his mind, if he hasn't already.

 

Abruptly, he turns back towards the car. “I'll get the bags. Try to find some wood in the house—we need to make a fire.”

 

She's got an armful of evenly hewed logs and is inexpertly shoving them into the dacha’s cast iron stove when he returns. He drops the baggage on the faded sofa that sits under the front windows, and crosses the room to her.

 

“You really _are_ a city girl,” he remarks, taking the wood from her and jostling the pieces she's jammed inside until there's enough space between them to let the air in.

 

She blushes, scoffs. “Well, yeah. Obviously.”

 

While he's getting the fire going, he observes her taking in the living room by the light of a lone lamp. Dark woven rugs overlap each other to completely cover the floor. They hang on the wooden walls, as well, to keep the heat in. Tchotchkes and books are piled up on several dusty bookcases. The furniture — the couch and an armchair, plus a dark wooden coffee table — are all clearly very old.

 

She disappears, probably to inspect the rudimentary kitchen in the back, then reappears, only to clamber up the ladder built into one of the room’s corners.

 

When she climbs back down, he looks up from where he’s been squatting in front of the stove, monitoring and stoking the infant fire within.

 

She's still blushing, and after hovering by him for a moment, watching the flickering flames over his shoulder, Rey mutters, “There's, um, no bathroom.”

 

He huffs, amused. _City girl, through and through._

 

“There's an outhouse in the back. A banya, too.” _Shall I carry you out there, to protect you from the snow and the cold?_ He shakes his head. He needs sleep — these errant thoughts are growing more fanciful by the minute.

 

Rey yawns, uncovered mouth open wide. “I'm gonna go use it. After—I know it's only like seven o'clock, but—”

 

“We should sleep,” he says.

 

A nod. “Yeah, that's my thinking.” The blush darkens.“There's—only one bed. We can share?”

 

“Of course.” _If it were the tsar’s winter palace and we had a hundred rooms to choose from, I still would not let you sleep in any bed but mine._

 

He rubs his eyes. “Go, be careful.”

 

She nods, grabbing a flashlight from one of the shelves, and steps out into the dark wintry night.

 

While she's outside, Kyril inspects the kitchen's small pantry. The shelves are stacked with jars of preserved fruit, canned vegetables and milk and fish, salted meat, flour and oil and salt, coffee and tea and sugar — they'll be alright. It'll be basic fare, but they won't starve.

 

When she returns, she washes her hands and begins to brush her teeth in the kitchen. Kyril slips out to relieve himself in the snow.

 

 _It's been too long,_ he muses as he lets himself back in and locks the door behind him, _since I've had the simple joy of pissing in a forest._

 

She's gone, already up in the loft. Kyril performs his own ablutions, gives the stove one last check — the fire's burning high, but the thicker cords of wood should smolder for at least a few hours and keep them warm in the room above. Then he too ascends the ladder.

 

And almost _immediately_ bangs his head on the wooden beams of the ceiling.

 

" _Блядь_ ,” he curses, at the dull, surprising pain of it.

 

He hears her snort.

 

She's seated on a pallet bed which takes up most of the loft, still clad in the pajamas she has worn all day, and Kyril _knows_ she must be as tired as he is because a high-pitched giggle follows the snort.

 

Once it starts, she can't seem to control it — her giggle deepens to belly laughter. He frowns, but she's on a tear, gasping for air now while she laughs. Tears well up in her squinted eyes, she slumps over and then she's sprawled out on the bed, gripping her belly as she fucking _guffaws_ and — Kyril, well, he tries to affect a scolding glare so he might will her to stop, but that only makes her laugh harder.

 

He climbs the rest of the way up into the loft and hurls himself onto the bed with a sigh, burying his head in the pillow, but she's still laughing, and it shakes the mattress. He turns his head just a fraction so he can glower at her with one open eye.

 

“Oh _God_ ,” she cries, and the peals of riotous laughter start anew.

 

Kyril cracks. First his lips twitch. Next, a lightness spreads throughout his sternum and his skull — which have felt so heavy and so choked and so ragged all day. Finally, he can resist no longer. He rolls onto his back, chuckling heartily up at his assailant, the steeply pitched but — in his defense — _very_ low ceiling.

 

“We made it— _all_ this way—” She breaks off, dissolving into hysterical tittering, before continuing, “only for—you—to be taken out—by a _roof_!”

 

“My _true_ nemesis,” he growls, half-hearted. He shakes his fist at the inoffensive wooden beams for dramatic effect.

 

Eventually, her gleeful laughing dies down to a contented sigh. “Oh, _Kyril_ ,” she murmurs, “Thanks. I needed that.”

 

“Me too,” he huffs. She tugs the covers out from under them before draping her body and the thick wool blankets over his; Kyril wraps his arm around her slender waist to pull her closer and tumbles headlong into an easy, dreamless sleep.

 

. . .

 

Rey dreams again of the forest. The snow, her tiny feet, the garnet droplets forming a trail before her, the gun shot, the ravens. Same as always: just as vivid, just as cryptic.

 

And as always, there is no gradual return to consciousness. The ravens are shrieking above her one moment, and the next — her eyes are open.

 

There's not much to see. The loft is dim in the fuzzy grey light of morning. All she can hear is the sound of Kyril's deep, even breathing; his furnace-hot body is melded to hers from heel to shoulder. One of his hand rests, relaxed and cradled in her much smaller grip, between her breasts. The other arm is flung out besides Rey’s head, his bicep serving as her pillow.

 

She feels so safe here, inside the fortress of his arms — his body her own personal kremlin, protecting her from the enigmas of her dream.

 

He mumbles something in his sleep, smacking his lips, and shifts one long leg forward until it's wedged between hers. Rey holds her breath for what feels like a full minute. The new position — his solid thigh warm and firm against her clothed sex — reminds her of what they did together, last night. Before everything went crazy. She waits to see if his move was purposeful, if he is trying to initiate something, but his breathing remains steady, tranquil.

 

 _Pity_ , she muses. _I don't think I would have minded._

 

Yesterday, when he'd veered off from the highway, she hadn't failed to miss the strange, heated glances he'd stolen in her direction. She'd chalked it up to the drugs and their matching exhaustion, and returned to her thoughts. But when the Lada turned again and again, each time onto progressively less developed and more backcountry roads, Rey had quickly come to understand that they were not going directly to Arkhangelsk.

 

And, to be honest, sneaking her own peeks at how his hands shook, at how his pale skin had blanched to a ghostly white, how he spent the day blinking too much and clenching his jaw to stay afloat — she was glad he was stealing her away.

 

_Am I sick and depraved, knowing what I think I know about you and yet still craving your hands and your mouth on me again? Wanting to care for your injuries? Craving this solitude with you?_

 

She nestles back into his body, running her fingers over his tattooed knuckles.

 

She'd only given in to the urge to cry once, while Kyril was inside the pharmacy. She’d allowed a few choked sobs to escape — for the lives she'd taken, and for the shocking violence of those long minutes between when she jumped up in a panicked frenzy from behind the Mercedes and when she'd shot the man who had been about to shoot Kyril. He'd caught her sniveling, of course. It had been shameful, she felt, that she hadn't been able to shut down her little self-pity party before he returned.

 

 _He called me Maslenitsa, though. A goddess. He said I saved his life._ And — he hadn't seemed disgusted, or annoyed with her, for crying. If anything she'd thought he looked worried. Maybe a little distracted, perhaps at war with his own guilt and shame.

 

Can she really be evil, anyway, if she saved the life of another? If it cost two to keep one? If she _knows_ she'd do it again in a heartbeat, were the circumstances to repeat themselves?

 

And how many has _he_ killed, as he did so effortlessly with his gun and his knife?

 

Rey doesn't know. She doesn't know if she _wants_ to know. She wonders if out here in their little gingerbread house in the middle of the woods, she can set aside his deeds and misdeeds — try to understand the _man._

 

Having settled on this plan, she runs her hand up the arm looped around her torso, and realizes that she is petting hair-covered skin. At some point in the night he has stripped down to his bare chest, probably in his sleep. Rey thrills at the opportunity to leer at his body without his knowing eyes watching her in kind.

 

She skips the hands, she's already spent hours watching them slide around the driver's wheel. On the forearm stretched out in front of her face is written the phrase “Только Бог мне судья”; on the one that lays heavily across her torso it reads, “Мир - это ложь. Есть только страсть. Страстью я набираю силу. Силой я набираю власть.”

 

She makes a note to ask him what they say.

 

She moves on, languidly twisting onto her back and then onto her other side, careful not to disturb the arm still draped over her waist. He snuffles a little, blowing out a heavy chuff, but doesn't stir.

 

His face is lovely like this — relaxed, his mouth looks even softer and lusher than it did right before he kissed her. Rey's eyes linger here, admiring the seemingly premeditated placement of the dark moles that grace his features, the stubble that rasps against the fleshy pad of her finger when she chances an exploratory stroke, the long dark lashes that sweep over the shadows beneath his eyes. She runs that same finger along the healed slash that cleaves his right cheek.

 

_Does this hurt? Who gave this to you? Why?_

 

His locks are tangled into a snarled nest around his face, and absently, she twirls one around her finger.

 

 _You have big ears,_ she thinks. There's something so human about that, about how he wears his hair long, in his face, to obscure them. _You probably hate them._ Gingerly, she brushes the hair back from his cheek and runs her finger along the thin cartilage shell of his ear. It pinkens a little, and in his sleep his thrusts his hips towards her. But he does not rouse.

 

 _You like being touched there, even though you hate for people to see them._ She smiles at his peaceful face. _I feel the same about my stupid knobby knees._

 

_You're cute, under all your dark and menacing handsomeness. I wonder if you would like it, if I told you that?_

 

Her eyes drift lower, face warm from the titillation of this stolen inspection, and then—

 

The blood in her veins goes cold, her body frozen in shock.

 

She'd assumed, from the tattoos on his knuckles, that he probably had more on the rest of his body. But the pageant of dark and angry visuals spanning his chest, his belly, his shoulders — Rey was not prepared.

 

Rey never could have been prepared, not for this.

 

She hardly knows what to look at first. She finds herself lingering on certain elements — the skulls above his navel that form the foundation of the massive church tattoo, the scarring of the rose near his nipple, done by an amateur and bearing the healed tears to prove it, the faceless hood of the executioner on his inner bicep, the sharp points of the stars resting beneath each of his clavicles.

 

The tattoos encompass most of his solid trunk, the skin beneath them smooth to the touch, save for the scars where the artist dug too deep. There are other scars, as well — knicks, mostly. A few burns.

 

There is something vaguely wicked, almost malefic, about the images. All at once Rey feels nauseous, and dizzy.

 

She is no stranger to tattooed men. Many of the regulars at the gym are aging punk-rockers and military men; the punks sport faded and stretched roses, skulls, guns, hearts — the sailors and soldiers have swallows, anchors, eagles and provocatively posed nude women.

 

But this — this is something _else_. She can't quite put her finger on why.

 

Perhaps it is the joyless black ink with which each image has been scratched into his skin.

 

Perhaps it is the feeling she gets that there is a story being told across his body, an important one, in a language she cannot decipher.

 

Perhaps it is the opaque shroud of their different cultures tumbling down between them.

 

In any case, she is barred from comprehension — only able to _sense_ the panoply of suffering behind these tattoos.

 

Rey is perturbed, no — she is _horrified_ , grasping for an understanding she cannot reach.

 

Like a door to a sunny day opened in a windowless room, she is stunned by the sudden blinding realization that the depth of what she does not know — it is deep enough to drown her.

 

“Oh, _God_ ,” she chokes, and crawls out of his arms, out of the bed, down the ladder, out the door, stumbling pell-mell through the deep snow drifts in her socked feet and pajamas.

 

Because the sad, ugly truth of it is this: yesterday, Rey spent most of the mindless, boring hours on the road forming a plan. In this plan, she was the woman who would save Kyril. She would tell him to leave all of this behind and come with her, walk away from the life he has chosen and choose her instead. And in her plan, it was just that easy.

 

She has been _such_ a fool.

 

She knows now that all that planning was for naught.

 

Because Rey may not know the precise meaning for each of his tattoos, but she _knows_ what they represent: Kyril has already made his choice.

 

She staggers around the clearing, a heavy woolen sky full of snow bearing down from above, the spindly birch and conifer trees advancing from the side. There is no shelter, there is no reprieve, there is just a thought, repeating itself: _you are a fool._

 

Rey is struck by the desire to hide, chagrined by her presumptuous daydreams of Kyril and her having some kind of happy ending. She reels towards the back of the dacha, eying the building Kyril referred to as a banya. The padlock on the door is unyielding steel but Rey finds an axe propped against the side of the building, raises it high above her head in both hands and hacks at the metal shackle until it gives. She flings the ruined lock into the snow, not caring where it lands, then lets herself into the windowless wooden shack. She slams the door shut behind her, relishing the immediate descent into utter darkness. With one hand flailing in front of her, she crosses the small shed until her knees bump against a bench.

 

First Rey sits, then she pulls her legs up to her chest, then she keels over onto her side and begins to rock herself, a coping mechanism she's used since she was a child with no one to hold or rock her.

 

 _This life you've chosen is forever, permanent. It's engraved on your skin for the whole world to see,_ she thinks.

 

 _I could no more convince you to leave than I could_ actually _bring about the death of winter._

 

She whines, a pitiful sound that draws out into a thready, wailing sob, and then the wall has been shattered, and at last she is crying in earnest.

 

_Why couldn't you wait for me like I waited for you? All my life I've wanted a connection, this feeling of belonging—_

 

The banya is cold, uninsulated and unheated, but still not as cold as the anguish twisting in her gut.

 

_I was good, I tried so damn hard to be good—whenever I could, I did the right thing._

_And I waited._

 

And when Kyril placed his big warm hands on her and told her — _her, Rey, who has been a nuisance or a burden or something to be forgotten or begrudgingly remembered for so many years_ — that she was a gift, a fucking _gift_ , some part of her had snatched at that word like a magpie does a strand of tinsel. She'd locked it away in this foolish heart of hers, in a box marked 'possibility’ and 'promise’ and 'ever after.’

 

_Why didn't you wait for me? Why did you choose your life before I could find you?_

 

 _I wanted you_ , she screams in her mind, but it doesn't help so she tries it aloud.

 

“I wanted you!”

 

It's still no use, there's no relief.

 

_I wanted you and I want you and you're already taken, by the life—theft, murder, God knows what else—that you have chosen._

And here she is, alone on the outside once again, a foolish girl hoping for impossible things.

 

Rey sobs until she can't, arms wrapped around herself and rocking.

 

. . .

 

He wakes to a dreadful sound — a woman hollering something he can't make out, muffled by the walls of the dacha but still quite close. For several long beats he is confused — he has been sleeping so deeply, his body clearly in need of rest, that it takes time for his mind to reshuffle his perception of reality back to normal.

 

And then he reaches for Rey, only to find that the bed is cold where she was laying in his arms last night.

 

Panic courses through him and he's up — shirtless, barefoot, wearing only insubstantial business slacks — he's out the door, he's following the maddening circle of tracks she's left in the clearing, he's—

 

— being led to the banya, upon whose doorsteps the trail ends.

 

Kyril eases the door open a crack, and finds Rey: she is curled up on the deep wooden bench built into the wall, on her side and rocking.

 

She is sobbing, the wings of her shoulder blades heaving beneath her long-sleeved shirt, her face buried in her arms.

 

“Irenushka.” Just a feather-soft whisper, and if he could, he would make his presence so slight it would be of no threat to her or anyone else.

 

_Have I ruined us? Tell me I haven't._

 

She freezes. Kyril doesn't need to ask her the why or the how of this. He can see his breath inside the banya, is acutely aware of his own shirtlessness in the subzero temperature. Whether he thinks the time is right is not relevant anymore. He considers letting her be, allowing her the space that she probably needs, but his selfish fear that she'll try to run wins out.

 

She has seen his tattoos — they _must_ have this conversation.

 

“I woke up. You were gone, and I heard a scream,” he murmurs, plodding forward, each foot carefully placed on the warped wood beneath his feet as though one wrong move will spook her. “Are you alright, мой волчoнок?”

 

She sniffs, says nothing.

 

He crouches beside the bench, lays one hand on her back. “You have questions,” he tells her.

 

“I don't know who I'm more afraid of—you or myself,” she says, in a broken wheeze.

 

That wheeze — it breaks him, too. It rocks him back on his heels and cracks open his chest, it ruptures his organs and leaves him a withered husk of a man.

 

“Rey,” says Kyril, trying and failing to keep his voice from quavering, “please come inside.”

 

“I can't, I'm so scared, I'm so _alone_ , always always alone,” she cries out, and rolls over — her eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot, the bruise under the right shines from the tears that have soaked her cheeks, snot is flowing from her nose, and Kyril—

 

Kyril has done many bad things in his life. He is a kinslayer, he has forsaken his lonely powerful mother in a land of strangers, he has pledged his life and his allegiance to a band of thieves, he has held hate in his heart for all the gods, old and new, he has let any remaining flicker of light in his soul die in a putrid jail cell—

 

This, though. Making this girl cry — this is the worst thing he has ever done.

 

He opens his arms to her, in what he fears will be a futile gesture. But he's ready to sit here, crouched down in front of her with his arms hanging out like an idiot, for all eternity, begging her with his hideous scarred face and his clumsy, disfigured body to please, please, _please_ not give up on him—

 

Rey whimpers, a frightened animal sound, and launches herself at him, fingernails digging into his back, wet face pressed against his skin. She is muttering something; he has to strain, bending his neck so his ear is down near her mouth, and then he catches it: “Why didn't you wait?”

 

“Why didn't you wait why didn't you wait whydidntyouwaitwhydidnt…”

 

“Why didn't you wait?” she is asking him, over and over. Kyril has no answer. No, he has an answer. It's just not a good one.

 

_Because I am a fool, who didn't know he was a fool._

 

“Come on,” he says, gently, working his hands under her thighs so he can lift her, wrap her legs around his waist and secure her to him with a hand at her back and another under her bottom.

 

“Irenushka,” he presses a kiss against her hair, as he carries her out of the banya and back to the house. “We need to eat something. And we need to talk. And you have questions, I know that. I will try to give you answers.”

 

It's not easy, struggling through the high snow with an armful of woman, even if she is a slip of one. Her fevered questioning falls away while he's walking — she is silent, clinging to him, her face hidden against his neck.

 

“But please know this,” he breathes, rubbing his ruined cheek against the top of her head as he sinks into the old couch once they're back in the dacha, Rey still in his lap. “You're _not_ alone.”

 

She shivers against him. For a while they sit there, in the hush of early morning, Kyril stroking her back and rocking her, Rey refusing to look up from the iron ring her arms have formed.

 

Finally, when he thinks perhaps she has fallen asleep, he hears it:

 

“Neither are you.”

 

. . .

 

She falls into a light doze like that, sitting astride him and breathing the thick, vaguely alpine musk of him — he smells like a _man_ , to her, like the first man who has ever made her feel this way.

 

Like she's been turned on her head: up has become down, night is now day, good and bad are melting, amorphous shapes that slip through her fingers.

 

 _Do I resent you?_ she asks him in a dream _. Do I begrudge you this awful need I have for you?_ He doesn't answer.

 

She wakes stretched out on the couch, disoriented by the knitted blanket she's tucked under, by the smell of chimney smoke and frying dough and the sound of a fire crackling merrily in the stove across the room.

 

 _This is… not how I left this_ , she thinks.

 

There is music playing in the kitchen, something classical. She gathers the blanket around her like a royal cloak, and shuffles towards it.

 

Kyril, still shirtless, is cooking breakfast. Is it the domesticity of the scene that makes the tattoos on his back — Mary holding the baby Jesus, and a surprisingly lifelike tiger — less awful than those on his front? Is it that their imagery seems more innocuous, somehow? Is it the way he's humming along to the string section, one finger bouncing along in the air? Maybe.

 

He turns to grab something from the assortment of ingredients and appliances scattered across the bright floral tablecloth — and notices her. He offers a small smile, which she does her best, despite the raging war in her mind, to return.

 

“Have you ever had blini before?” he asks, picking up a plate stacked high with thin, crepe-like pancakes, each one no bigger than the size of her palm.

 

Rey shakes her head in stunned silence.

 

Kyril shrugs. “These won't be very good — we only have canned milk, and no eggs. But we have some strawberries to improve the taste.” He points to a jar full of bright red fruit syrup, then turns back to the single gas burner atop the small counter, where two blinis are frying in a pan.

 

She takes two steps forward, the cold linoleum flooring against her bare toes — _did he take off her wet socks, when she fell asleep?_ — making her hiss.

 

There Rey wavers for a moment, flipping through her options. She considers demanding the keys, kicking his ass, and driving out of here. She considers screaming at him. She considers going ahead with her stupid plan from yesterday, and asking him to run away with her.

 

Instead, she collapses into one of the sturdy wooden chairs and stares at his back.

 

“Prokofiev,” he says, pointing at an old radio on a shelf in the corner. “My mother's favorite.”

 

Rey swallows, trying to find the right words. She settles for blunt. “You're a criminal.”

 

For an instant, he tenses, and she holds her breath, waiting for an outburst — shouting or violence, maybe both.

 

“Yes,” he says at last, still not turning. “I am.”

 

“You didn't tell me, about the tattoos. About—how serious it is, for you.”

 

Now he does turn, twisting the gas burner’s dial until its flame dies, then carrying the plate of blini to the table. “No, I didn't.”

 

She thinks he will sit down, but he doesn't right away. He passes into the living room and returns with a kettle, his hand protected by a bright floral dish towel that matches the tablecloth. He procures two delicate tea cups from the pantry and pours out a cup of aromatic black tea, placing one by Rey's hand.

 

“Eat something, milaya,” he says, finally collapsing into the chair catty-cornered from hers. He knocks his bare foot against hers. “Please.”

 

“I'll eat if you talk,” she says, a negotiation.

 

He nods, swallowing thickly. His eyes drift upwards, but when Rey follows his line of sight she sees nothing but the ceiling’s wooden beams. _Can't you look at me, when you tell me who you are? Or are you filled with shame, as I am?_

 

He clears his throat, eyes still trained on the ceiling. “The Solntsevskaya crime syndicate operates mostly in Moscow, although we have begun to expand to other cities. I am a Vor. Do you know what this is?”

 

Rey pours the viscous strawberry preserves across the blinis on her plate, then rolls one up and shoves the whole thing in her mouth. She doesn't know what Kyril's talking about with the whole ‘not very good’ thing, but then again she has also just realized in these last ten second that she is absolutely _ravenous_ and this is just about the best thing she's ever eaten. She downs two more without even thinking.

 

He’s staring at her now, eyebrows raised as she chews her mouthful of soft, grainy pancake and sickly-sweet strawberry hunks. She reaches for another, arching a brow in response.

 

“There are—forks—” he tries, but she cuts him off.

 

“I like it this way. Keep talking.”

 

“A Vor is—an elevated position, in the Bratva—”

 

“Have you killed people?” she interrupts.

 

“Yes,” he says, stone-faced and still.

 

“How many?”

 

“I haven't kept count.”

 

She swallows the pancake with difficulty — it sticks in her throat like a leaden lump. “A lot, then. Were they innocent, or _criminals_ , like you?”

 

She thinks this hurts him, sees a dark cloud pass over his face before he goes stoic again. “There were innocents.”

 

“Do you regret it? Do you feel remorse?”

 

He sighs. “There was one—it doesn't matter. The Otets—Snoke, that is, he told me once that in this battle there would be difficult choices. We would have to eliminate people who _presented_ themselves as righteous, but they would be lying. Rey, all of them—I did what needed to be done. They were traitors, or Tambovskaya, or informers, and—”

 

Rey sips at her tea. It scalds her tongue but she likes its smoky, earthy flavor. “And you think you've been doing the _right_ thing?”

 

“I didn't say that.” Kyril leans forward, one elbow on the table and one hand resting very gently on her knee — it's so big his fingers almost touch at the back of her leg.

 

“Irenushka, _please_. Look at me,” he says, so Rey does — because his voice is filled with urgency, and yearning, and because _damn it all_ , his hand on her leg makes her stomach swoop with anticipation—

 

“I am thirty years old. I was born in nineteen sixty-four, just nineteen years after the end of the Second World War. Our countries were already locked in a cold war by then, and—I suspect you're younger than me—maybe you don't know much _about_ this country. Maybe you don't remember that time. Do you know what it means to grow up afraid? Afraid for your foreigner mother, for your stubborn father who has been awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, made into a symbol of Soviet virtue but refuses to play the part?” The muscle under his left eye ticks furiously, the hand not holding her knee is clenched in a tight fist on the table.

 

Rey bites her lip, fighting against the swell of sympathy she feels. She doesn't know what it's like to be afraid of her government, maybe, but Rey knows _plenty_ about a childhood filled with anxiety and interludes of paralyzing terror.

 

“I was afraid, all the time. Afraid of the secret police showing up in the dead of night, afraid of the Americans dropping the bomb on us. And later, when I was old enough to understand politics—furious at the lies that spilled from the mouths of Brezhnev and Kosygin and Andropov, things I knew were lies because they made my mother cry with frustration. And all the while I had this notion—that I would _never_ see anything besides the paranoid wasteland of the USSR.”

 

Rey wants to hold him now, wants to take him in her arms and stroke his hair because he looks so _lost_. She remembers the fear of the bomb, too, although it was only ever an abstract concept for her. But the nagging certainty that her life would never go anywhere, that New York and the system would eat her alive and spit out her bones? That, Rey understands.

 

He takes another deep breath, watching her. He purses his lips, another of his nervous tells, and presses on. “And hungry, too, Rey. We had money and prestige and we _still_ went hungry sometimes.”

 

His eyes are searching, beseeching, and Rey feels pinned to her seat, because this too, she knows — she _knows_ what it feels like to go hungry.

 

“There weren't any choices, milaya. Not any good ones. Not for me. But Snoke—he had a vision. He still does. And he saw my place in it, he showed me that I could make myself into something more—something _great_. A Vor—and one day, the Otets. Godfather of the Solntsevskaya. I would _humiliate_ all of them, who expected me to fall in line with the party. I would never know hunger or fear or be trapped by my legacy.”

 

He leans in.

 

“Can you imagine what it felt like, to be offered this?”

 

Rey heaves a ragged sigh, and places her hand on his. “I—maybe. Maybe I can, in some sense, Kyril. I know hunger, and fear. But I—” _Can she say it? Can she admit this secret, foolish shame?_ She must, she decides. “I wish you had waited, that's all. I wish you hadn't chosen violence or money or power, or whatever else this Snoke creep sold you.”

 

He makes a sound, like a pained grunt but soft, almost inaudible. “You—” he starts, but his voice wavers. He inhales deeply, and tries again. “You wanted to know and now you do—I'm a criminal. I've done bad things—I can't undo them. I won't apologize for them. It would change nothing. If I had met you when I was young—”

 

Kyril trails off, looking down at his hand, which he has not moved from her knee. He's stroking the sensitive skin behind it, and when her breathing hitches, he leans closer.

 

“You need more food. Eat another blini,” he instructs, “with your hand.”

 

“Stop bossing me around,” grouses Rey, but she rolls up a blini and takes a huge bite. Two more and she's finished the thing, ready to reach for another, when Kyril says—

 

“Clean your fingers. Use your mouth.”

 

She snorts. “ _Really_? C’mon Kyril, this conversation isn't finished. Lots of people suffered without joining _gangs_.”

 

“I saw what my life was _expected_ to be, Rey—son of an American diplomat and a war hero pilot—educated at a good school in Germany—I was going to spend my whole life as propaganda. A living prop—for a corrupt government to parade around, seated at some desk job and expected to give lectures on the glory of communist brotherhood to soft young minds, expected to just ignore the problems—”

 

“And what? Doing— _whatever_ it is you do—is some kind of Robin Hood bullshit, that's the line you're trying to feed me?” She stands, expecting his hand to fall away, but it doesn't.

 

“Sowing chaos. Bringing in weapons, mostly, some contraband goods—destabilizing the state, so we can establish something new—something better. That's been the work of our leader, Ivan Ivanovich Snoke, all these years. That's what he told me, when I met him in East Berlin as a boy. He told me he would make this country great, that it was our calling to liberate the Russian people from the Soviet yoke, and let them decide for themselves if they want to partake in the evils of capitalism or not—”

 

“Fuck that. Listen to yourself, Kyril, this Snoke guy—I would bet every dollar in my bank account that _he's_ using you,” she hisses.

 

“Maybe,” he groans, sliding off the chair and onto his knees before her. Before she can pull away, his arms are wrapped around her hips, his face pressed into the hollow beneath her breasts. “Maybe. But I couldn't be _their_ poster child, milaya. The expectations were—too great. I needed to be free—and freedom was in short supply."

 

“And you're not a poster child now?” she asks, practically shouting at him despite his proximity. “Tell me they're not using you, Kyril. Tell me you've never felt used by Snoke.”

 

He doesn't answer, but he squeezes his arms, his solid body shuddering against her. He is bare-chested, kneeling — vulnerable like this, exposed to her gaze. She runs a gentle finger across the stitched bullet wound at his shoulder; she can spy the bandage over the one on his ribs.

 

“It's _funny_ ,” she coughs, her voice husky. “Too funny.”

 

“Is it?” he asks, propping his chin on her chest and peering up at her with wet eyes. His hands rest on the swell of her hips, thumbs rubbing circles in the thin fabric of her sleeping shirt.

 

“It's just—we're so similar in some ways. I went hungry, I was scared, I was alone. But—no one ever expected _anything_ of _me_ , except maybe to get pregnant or hooked on drugs and flunk out of school.”

 

“Rey—” he starts, looking anguished by her words. Rey can hear the beginnings of pity in his voice. _No_ , she thinks. _Anything but pity._

 

“Not until Luke,” she amends.

 

“Luke,” he echoes, his grip on her tightening.

 

She nods, running her fingers through his mess of hair. “Yeah. I met him at a boxing gym–”

 

“A what?” he growls. His fingers are hurting her now, digging into her skin, and she gives a pinched yelp. “Ah, shit. Shit.” He loosens his grip, bending over to place a sweet kiss on one hip, then the other. He pushes her shirt up, brushing his lips along the sharp bones of her pelvis. “Is that Luke _Skywalker_?”

 

“How did you—”

 

“He's related to me,” Kyril mumbles, against the opposite hip bone.

 

“Oh my God. Leia, the sister who went off to the USSR and never returned, you're—”

 

“Yes. And no.”

 

His hands have drifted down as his mouth ventures upwards, mapping the plane of her abdomen with his lips. He's kneading her ass in a way that is very distracting, is making this _important_ conversation they're having very difficult, but this matters too _much_ —

 

Pulling his face back by his hair gathered in her fist, she grits out, “Kyril. Explain.”

 

“We're estranged,” he says, leaning in towards her again.

 

“Your mom was a big deal wasn't she? Didn't she— _fuck that feels_ —single handedly keep the Cuban Missile Crisis from—uh, wait, _wait_ ,” she gasps, overwhelmed just by the lavishing he's giving the soft skin under her breasts. “I don't know if this is a good idea. I don't know—”

 

“She still is a big deal, to many. Let me touch you, milaya,” he pleads, his hands sliding up her ribs to pull her closer. He rises up off his heels, raising her shirt until her bare breasts are exposed. “Let me make you feel good, like you deserve.”

 

And Rey, she knows there are more words to be spoken. There is more she needs to know, more he needs to explain before she can figure out just what the _hell_ she is going to do about the fact that she's managed to go all loopy over a fucking Russian mafioso.

 

But right now, she feels like nitroglycerin — dangerously wet, ready to combust. Kyril mouths at the underside of her breast and how — _how can he make this, a part of her body she's never even considered because aren't the nipples the stars of the show?_ — how can he make this so fucking luscious, so unbearably _good_? Rey wants to melt into him, let him swallow her down or eat her up or whatever the hell he wants.

 

If this is wrong, then what even _is_ right?

 

What use is right to her if it doesn't include Kyril's eyes, pupils blown wide, staring up at her with veneration — his perfect lips pulling at the swell of her breasts with loud kisses, a thing she never she knew she wanted until right now?

 

“Words,” she bleats, when he closes his mouth around a nipple and sucks. “We need—to, ah—use words, we're—” His hands are bringing her closer, one at the waistband of her pajama pants, tugging them down. “We need to _talk_ about this.”

 

“Yes, Irenushka—talking. We're _going_ to talk, I promise,” says Kyril, right before he jumps to his feet, takes her hand in his, and bending in half, pushes forward into her stomach. With a grunt, he straightens, an arm around her legs, Rey positioned like a sack of potatoes on his shoulder.

 

“Hey!”

 

“Don't worry, нежная девушка, we're not going far.”

 

. . .

 

He wasn't lying. A minute later, she is deposited gently onto the couch. Kyril settles between her legs, one hand under her back, keeping her slightly lifted. He fiddles with the elastic waistband of her — frankly, embarrassingly plain and old — panties.

 

“Rey,” he says, his voice gone somber. “I want you to choose me.”

 

And this is it, isnt it? At the crux of it, they _both_ want to be chosen.

 

“I—what about—the Bratva?”

 

She can't breathe, can't blink, can't do anything but watch his sharp, shrewd eyes watch her.

 

“What about them?” he asks, an inquisitive pointer finger caressing the reddened line of skin beneath the elastic.

 

 _Say it, Rey. Be strong. For him_ and _for you._

 

“Would you consider leaving it all behind, for me?”

 

He sucks in a sharp breath, letting his forehead dip until it rests against the tensed muscles of her abdomen. There he stays, breathing her in.

 

“Irenushka. For you—I would consider it,” he says, voice indistinct, smothered by her skin.

 

 _Is that enough?_ _Can I be allowed this, for now?_ Rey asks her aching heart. _It will suffice_ , say the broken pieces.

 

“Make me feel good, Kyril,” she whispers.

 

He nods, glancing up at her, then elevates her legs to yank off her pajamas and underwear with one good tug.

 

She can see that he's hard, but once again he's ignoring that, and she wonders how he can be as selfish as he says he is and still put her first like this.

 

_Who are you, you unearthly creature of contradiction—misery and joy, good and evil, soft and hard?_

 

His fingers trace patterns in her hot, wet flesh, his face sinking down like a setting sun between her legs, warmth spreading along her sex wherever his eyes linger.

 

“You're _bare_ , milaya. Do you always shave yourself down here?”

 

Rey feels the heat on her face, imagines it's gone beet red, when he asks her that. She slams her eyes shut, then gives a small shake of her head from side to side.

 

 _It's for you,_ she thinks, although it's too much — too personal an admission — so she keeps mum.

 

But it's as if he hears the thought, because he croons, with a hint of awe, “Just for me, then. And this?” His fingers have been probing her, lightly passing up and down her slit, and when she cracks one eye open, he is staring up at her — nostrils flared, satisfaction in the quirked line of his lips — with two shiny wet fingers raised. When their eyes meet, he asks again, “Is this _also_ for me, Irenushka?”

 

“Yes,” she gasps, “Kyril, please don't tease me right now. I need—”

 

“I know, sweet girl. I know,” he says, and he sets upon her.

 

The kiss he gives her is like all the kisses he has given her so far — full of passionate concentration, slight changes made as a result of his intense study of her reactions. First he swipes at her with the broad, firm pressure of his flat tongue, and she mewls — _fucking mewls, my God, has she no shame?_ — so he does it again, before licking up into her, his soft lips lovingly devouring her labia in the process.

 

Rey wails like a banshee, safe in the knowledge they're too far out in the Russian winter wonderland for anyone to hear.

 

And he likes it when she responds, she can tell right away, from how his hands on her grow hotter, and hold her more firmly, how he begins thrusting his hips against the couch cushion beneath him, how his eyes dart up to hers — dark and feline in their impishness but oh so intent and she wants him to—

 

She doesn't have to ask, though — his tongue is already there, brushing over that sensitive fleshy little nub before she can even open her mouth to tell him what she needs. It feels so good that her hips jerk, _hard_. He places a large hand on her stomach, fingers splayed and almost spanning it from side to side, thumb sweeping over her mons — and she is fixed, stuck in this position.

 

With one hand supporting her from below, one steadying her from above, and her legs slung over his broad shoulders, Rey thinks she must be right where he wants her because he groans, a noise so deep it sounds like it’s been ripped from his gut, and renews his effort. It feels like he's everywhere, touching everything — his tongue on her clitoris, now licking the swollen skin around her vulva, now focusing on her folds — softly sucking on them, now back inside — collecting the slick clear moisture she's sure is pooling there. His stubble scratches against her sensitive skin, and even _this_ is _wonderful_.

 

It is, beyond a doubt, the best experience she's ever had with this particular act. It's only the third, but the other two had been so bizarre — she'd felt so exposed and uncomfortable, unexcited by their fumbling touches. But Kyril — Rey can see that he's not a man who is easily deterred, and he has transformed this forever for her, made it into something sacred.

 

Her body grows heated, flushed — sweat beginning to bead at her forehead, along her spine. Still he works at her. His plush mouth is so talented, and Rey wants to come, is _almost_ there, feels it all building up inside her — but, conversely, she doesn't want to, because she wants to reside inside this pleasure, in his overwhelming, single-minded attention, for the rest of her life.

 

 _Never stop,_ she thinks. He nods, and she realizes she's moaned it aloud.

 

“Come for me, Maslenitsa,” he moans in turn. “Give me another gift, won't you?”

 

That's it, that word — _gift_ — it's almost enough, the muscles in her cunt are twitching in warning, and Rey _must_ have no shame left, because she cries out, “Tell me I'm good! Please, _fuck_ , please Kyril tell me I'm—”

 

“Боже, so _good_. My good girl,” he says, the vibration of his words spoken with his lips around her clitoris, the slight scratch of his tongue’s surface against her as he sucks — it's all she needs.

 

She keens, a high-pitched sob. She's coming, cunt fluttering, legs trembling. Everything is lost to her for a few shimmering seconds. They lock eyes, Kyril still suckling, still drawing out this crackling high — and there is just this, just a crescendo of pleasure and its echoes — warm waves, each one washing over her a little more faintly, receding a little farther, until she feels her mind settle back into her body.

 

“Beautiful, Rey,” he says, and takes one last lick. His face is a mess, the evidence of her orgasm shining lewdly across his cheeks. She giggles, feeling — what? _What is this feeling?_

 

Sated. Naughty. Good. Kept, discovered at last, safe.

 

He's breathing deeply, winded like someone who's run a marathon, one hand palming the sizeable bulge in his trousers. She watches him passively, trying to discern if she could ever look at his tattoos and not recoil. In this moment, she thinks maybe she could. He examines her as well, his eyes contemplative as they trail over her damp, cooling body.

 

They stop at the scar. _Shit_. She'd forgotten it, in the heat of the moment, and he hadn't noticed, not when he was busy eating her out. But he notices _now_ , because he says with painstaking precision, each word spit out between grit teeth as he thumbs at the shiny healed slash running the length of her thigh, “Who—did—this?”

 

She groans, eyes shut. It's hard to think after an orgasm like that, hard to gather herself together enough to dissimulate. Even his hand on her scar, which nobody — _nobody_ — is allowed to touch, normally, feels so damn _nice_ and she can't think, just _think_ , Rey—

 

He asks again, still audibly seething, “Irenushka. Who did this? They're—they are _going_ to _die_. I'm going to kill them for this.”

 

And Rey cannot think of a believable lie, her mind is still stuck on the words 'my’ and 'good’ and 'girl’, blinking in neon behind her eyelids. So she resigns herself to the truth, choking out:

 

“You _can't_ kill him—I already did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some stuff! This chapter's research was very bullet-wound and Russian dacha-intensive. I'm sure my FBI agent will be along any minute now.
> 
> Translations!
> 
> "...аптека." _[aptika]_  
>  **apothecary, pharmacy, chemist's**
> 
> "Блядь" _[Blyad]_  
>  **Fuck**
> 
> "Только Бог мне судья" _[Tol'ko Bog mne sud'ya]_  
>  **Only God can judge me**
> 
> "Мир - это ложь. Есть только страсть. Страстью я набираю силу. Силой я набираю власть." _[Mir - eto lozh'. Yest' tol'ko strast'. Strast'yu ya nabirayu silu. Siloy ya nabirayu vlast'.]_  
>  **Peace is a lie. There is only Passion. Through Passion I gain Strength. Through Strength I gain Power.**
> 
> (Hmmm, that sounds [familiar](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Code_of_the_Sith), no?)
> 
> "Боже..." _[Bozhe]_  
>  **God**  
>  Links!
> 
> Now let's talk about dachas. Can we talk about dachas please, guys? I've been dying to talk about dachas with you all day, okay [?](https://youtu.be/_nTpsv9PNqo)
> 
> So what is a [dacha](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacha)?
> 
> What [kind](http://www.doit.house/russian-dacha.shtml) of dachas are there?
> 
> What is the dachniki [lifestyle](http://www.friends-partners.org/oldfriends/asebrant/life/dacha.html) like?
> 
> This chapter was my excuse to make My Dream Dacha™, and I apologize for the many inconsistencies with normal dacha life. Blame it on my need to write some damn porn already. XD
> 
> Some dacha inspiration if you're interested [here](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTBoi7xV5j2aF4OW9b4qF9p_W61RHVacnPME5sEHn4kxwEfY9d4) and [here](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSabPs-Bu7W_kx8aKrKwXwWETbnS0KuJWY-p399PwGre5DV3pg0rA) and [here](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTgzke9ANZfZxrnVOkSy-3L_0HlCBDJlsD250prVdgYWacbEy6yRg)!  
>    
> Descriptions of gunshot wound [types](https://patient.info/doctor/gunshot-injuries).
> 
> How do you [treat](https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000737.htm) a bullet wound? (Hint: do not pour vodka on it. That only works in movies and fanfiction.)
> 
> I could find almost no information about Chekshino besides the fact that it exists. But here are some fun pictures of snowy Russian highway: [one](https://us.123rf.com/450wm/asb63/asb631612/asb63161200015/67780334-federal-road-a360-lena-in-south-yakutia-russia-in-wintertime.jpg?ver=6) [two](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Shuurmak.JPG/440px-Shuurmak.JPG)
> 
> Some info about [corruption](http://factsanddetails.com/russia/Government_Military_Crime/sub9_5e/entry-5200.html#chapter-7) within the Russian police force in the '90s, and an interesting article examining the [legacy of systematic problems](https://journals.openedition.org/pipss/3978) the post-soviet police inherited.
> 
> What's a [marshrutka](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka)?
> 
> How do you [hotwire](http://www.askaprepper.com/hot-wire-car-shtf-pictures/) a car?
> 
> What's a Zhiguli ([Lada](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhiguli_\(car_brand\)))?
> 
> Whats a [Vaz-2101](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAZ-2101)?
> 
> Some fun Soviet [tablecloths](https://www.google.hu/amp/flavorwire.com/335502/communist-tablecloths-and-other-crazy-soviet-fabric-patterns/amp)!
> 
> The Soviets have a long history of [secret police](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Soviet_secret_police_agencies). For most of his life, Kyril would have been living with this [iteration, the KGB](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB).
> 
> What's the [Hero of the Soviet Union](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_the_Soviet_Union) medal?
> 
> Who is [Prokofiev](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Prokofiev)? [Brezhnev](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Brezhnev)? [Kosygin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Kosygin)? [Andropov](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Andropov)?
> 
> And finally, _can_ you make eggless blinis? This vegetarian blog says [yes.](http://theyogivegetarian.blogspot.hu/2012/04/blinis-eggless-buckwheat-pancakes-for.html?m=1)
> 
> Okay, I have more references but I've run out of space. Feel free to ask if you want to know more about something, and thank you for reading!


	5. места, где мы питаемся

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the places where we are nourished

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could gush for five thousand words about how much I appreciate everyone's feedback, but I will try to restrain myself and just say **thank you** for reading and interacting, in any way that you choose! I'm so so grateful for all of it. ❤
> 
> Shoutout to edawn who made a lovely [moodboard](http://edawn.tumblr.com/post/174084702788) for this fic. Thank you again!!
> 
> And as always this chapter would be a crazy hot mess if not for [Kachenka](http://luminousreylo.tumblr.com) and her excellent beta skills. She's the bomb, you guys.
> 
> Finally, a couple warnings: there is discussion of **past childhood abuse and domestic violence** in the first passage so if you want to avoid that, scroll down past the first ellipses. There is also a very, _very_ fleeting moment of **light breathplay** (honestly, I hesitate to even call it that but better to be safe and let you know, I think). It occurs right after Rey is finished washing the dishes, and finishes at the end of _that_ passage. 
> 
> Alright that's enough from me, let's all go get weird in the banya!

“D—don’t look at me like that,” she stammers, trying to twist away from him.

 

Kyril needs to speak, he knows this. Needs to utter kind words, reassuring words — but he's lost his step, his dick flagging as the color drains from her soft cheeks. He wipes his face clean with Rey's pajama pants, trying to buy himself time.

 

 _Say something, idiot._ But what to say? If his conception of Rey is a mosaic he has been arranging, each piece of her soul a brightly colored tile — she has just handed him a jagged shard of obsidian, and ordered him to shuffle the pieces until it fits. He is confounded.

 

_You, my lost lamb? My springtime goddess? You are a killer, like me?_

 

“Wait,” he says, and lays a heavy hand between her breasts to keep her lying supine on the couch beneath him. This makes her struggle harder, an indignant blush climbing up her neck — but Kyril leans close and whispers it again: “Wait.”

 

“I'm not a psycho,” she blurts out, eyes wide, fidgeting. “There was a trial, I was charged as an adult—Luke got me a lawyer. Self defense—justifiable homicide. I was acquitted on all charges. I'm _not_ a psycho and I'm not a murderer.”

 

Rey tries to close her legs, between which he is sitting. She makes to squirm backwards, and he can read it in her wary expression — she's ready to flee.

 

“I know.” He runs his free hand up her downy thigh to caress the scar, then propels himself forward while maneuvering her to the inside of the sofa. The tired springs groan when he flops down beside her but he doesn't care — he’s busy staring into her eyes, crowding her back into the floral cushions behind her.

 

Finally, he finds his voice again. “I know you're not, Rey. Will you tell me what happened?”

 

She takes a deep breath as if to prepare for the spinning of a long tale, but before she can start, her lower lip begins to wobble. “I—” she tries, but a wet hiccup comes out instead and she begins to cry.

 

“ _Irenushka_ ,” he murmurs, pulling her close. “You are safe, here in my arms. Don't you feel safe? Didn't I make you feel good, just now—don't you know how much I—want you?”

 

She nuzzles her face against the column of his throat, one hand coming to rest hesitantly on his ribs. Her fingernails scrape looping patterns there, perhaps writing the words she cannot bring herself to speak.

 

“Yes,” she says at last, after many long minutes. “I—I know.”

 

Another breath, and she begins.

 

“My mom ran away from Russia when I was really little, and took me to the US. I don't remember any of that, except—I don't know, none of it really. She died in New York, and I was put in the foster system. Do you—do you have that here?"

 

“Беспризорники,” Kyril says, summoning to mind his country's equivalent. “Orphanages, boarding schools, foster homes—yes. We have those.”

 

They are not nice places, although he doesn't say this; but in his heart he _aches_ for her — for the childhood he imagines she had. He runs a hand along her bare back, tracing the notches of her spine, and inches closer, nudging his folded arm under her head until it serves as pillow for her cheek. He feels her relax, ever so slightly. She looks up at him.

 

“A lot of my homes were fine, really. Run down, crowded, with some violent kids maybe. Mostly just tired and, uh, overwhelmed parents. Neglectful, I guess. I ran a little wild, 'cause—just because I could. Because then they had to talk to me, and focus on me.”

 

“Мой бедный волчoнок," he grunts, the quaver in her voice making the ache burrow deeper.

 

Rey worries at her lip for a second, until he ducks down to brush his lips across it. She huffs against his mouth, and continues.

 

“So I kept getting bounced around, and part of it was my fault because I was always picking fights, but part of it was just the nature of the foster system. It's not meant to be permanent, and I had—baggage. Then Unkar Plutt took me in, when I was about twelve or so.”

 

“He did this,” Kyril says, his tone dark, not asking a question but confirming a suspicion. He runs the tips of his fingers over the hardened, shiny skin.

 

She nods.

 

“Your _guardian_ ,” he seethes, “did this to you.”

 

She turns her face, burying it in the bend of his elbow. “He liked taking teens and older kids, because he said we were fucked up damaged goods but at least we could fend for ourselves,” she mutters.

 

“He was a terrible drunk but he hid it well from CPS. And for a few years it worked—I just stayed away most of the time, only went home to sleep or change my clothes. So, when it happened—Phoebe and me, we were the oldest—I was sixteen.”

 

The terrible ache in Kyril's chest — it outdoes his bullet wounds in its intensity.

 

“Phoebe was turning seventeen in a couple months. We were planning her birthday party—she was a Club Kid, a big part of that whole scene, and she was going to get us into this wild place down in Chelsea called The Limelight. It was in a church. Is it weird, that I remember that?”

 

“You could never be weird,” says Kyril, placing a chaste kiss on her cheek, under the livid bruise that mars her right eye. “But if you _are_ , then so am I.”

 

Her lips quiver again, and she darts her eyes up at him before hiding her face again. “Unkar drank too much that night and attacked one of the younger ones, a boy—Bobby, he was only twelve. Luke had been—”

 

He almost chokes on his tongue, hand stilling at the mention of his stupid fucking uncle, _again_ , but Kyril manages to keep his peace, and resumes wordlessly stroking the sylphlike curves of her lean body.

 

She notices, of course, but pushes on.

 

“Luke had started training me to fight. I mean—I fought before. He was teaching me to fight _smart_. Unkar was so drunk, Kyril—that night, he was completely wasted, and raving like a lunatic. When he went after poor Bobby with a kitchen knife, I just felt something in me _snap_ and—”

 

She coughs, distressed, and Kyril tries to move closer but he cannot move closer, because they are already lying flush, their bodies touching everywhere — so he reaches up and tugs Rey's head forward, tucking it back under his chin.

 

“You’re safe here with me, milaya,” he reminds her. She nods, hot tears staining his neck.

 

“I stepped in front of Bobby. Instead of stabbing his, I don't know, I guess he was aiming for his gut—he got me in the leg. It hurt so bad, like it was on fire and being torn apart, which I guess it was and—I just _reacted_ , you know? I punched him—really hard—and he lost his balance.”

 

“ _Good_ ,” Kyril snarls. “You did the right thing.”

 

 _This? This is why you don't believe you're good?_ he wonders. _Because you defended a little boy against a drunk old man?_

“He hit his head when he fell,” she adds. “Cracked his skull. The pain—the doctors said it triggered a massive heart attack or something.”

 

He nods, but says nothing, because she is bracing herself to continue, because he can tell that she needs to see this through.

 

“It looks worse than it is. It wasn't that deep, only nicked the muscle down by my knee. I just needed one surgery, after they sewed me back up. But—there was a lot of blood. Phoebe, she was so cool—just this giant Nordic blonde with bright blue eyes and a ton of street smarts, she went by Phasma in the clubs—she knew what to do. She told us not to take the knife out, and she pushed the two sides of the cut together, held them shut and basically sat on my leg until the EMT’s got there. She saved my life.”

 

Kyril remembers the first time he saw a body's worth of blood, emptied out in a Berlin back alley — it was horrifying. _I should find this Phoebe woman and thank her,_ he thinks.

 

“I got really lucky. There was no acute compartment syndrome, my rehab only took a couple months and then I was boxing again. And—the trial—Luke took me in, before the arraignment. The other kids all testified, obviously, so the whole thing was pretty open and shut. Our lawyer said the only reason they even pressed charges was because of my—um, record. But—I lived with Luke after that. He formally adopted me a year or so later.”

 

Kyril decides to ignore this laundry list of saint _fucking_ Luke's good deeds. He sighs, and tries for a solacing tone.

 

“What happened to you—you did nothing wrong, мой волчoнок. You’re a survivor. Like me.”

 

“If I'm a survivor, then why do I always feel like I'm hiding, like there's something wrong with me? Why do I feel so _weak_ all the time, Kyril?” she implores, her voice breaking.

 

“I don't know,” answers Kyril, earnestly, and lowers his lips to hers. Into her mouth, he breathes a promise. “But I will not rest until you feel _strong_.”

 

. . .

 

For a while they doze on the sofa, bodies entwined. He helps her out of her shirt when the heat of him and the enkindled stove becomes too warm. Shafts of morning sunlight break through the clouds and slide across the woven rugs on the floor as Rey passes in and out of cryptic dreams.

 

She awakens gradually. The generator, which had droned in the background the night before, has turned itself off now — _it must be on a timer_ , she thinks — but there is no need for electricity. Not here and now, when she is naked, tangled up in Kyril's long, solid limbs.

 

 _I will not rest until you feel strong_ , he told her.

 

Once again Rey stares at his sleeping face, his menacing tattoos — and she _wants_. A terrible hunger, a thirst, a black hole of need within her is yawning ever-wider—

 

 _Don't you dare ever leave me,_ she wants to tell him. _If you tame me, know that then you must keep me._

 

She eases herself out from between him and the cushions. When she looks down at her discarded clothes, she thinks — a bit whimsically — why bother? She strolls into the kitchen in the nude, gathers the forgotten knitted blanket from her chair and drapes it around her shoulders.

 

Idly, mostly because she needs to busy her hands, Rey begins to clean the kitchen. Kyril is a tornado of a chef, she observes, picking up the trail of dirty dishes, bowls, utensils, opened cans and jars he has left in his wake. After everything is gathered in the sink in a towering pile, she turns on the tap. She waits, but the jet of cold water that issues forth never warms, so she compensates with extra soap and sets upon the dishes.

 

The back wall of the dacha, like the front, is lined with windows. Rey’s mind drifts as she washes and stares out into the serene, snowy forest. She reflects on the morning, dissecting each of Kyril's reactions — each of his words — as though performing a post-mortem.

 

 _I am a survivor_ , she reminds herself. It's not that Kyril is the first to tell her this — Poe and Finn say it all the time. They never fail to tell her how strong she is when she's having one of her bad days. But... it's different somehow, when he says it. Knowing what she now knows, how Kyril has suffered in his own right, how he has had to make terrible decisions just like she has — it makes the word resonate. _I am a survivor, like Kyril. He said so._

 

 _And if someone like Snoke had come to me when I was stuck in that hellhole with Plutt, would I have refused him? If he’d told me that I could be great, that_ he _would_ make _me great, that I would be so important that all the people who had hurt me would choke on their envy, would I have had the strength to say no?_

 

If Luke had taken her in, only to manipulate her — had pretended like he was teaching her right from wrong while really just grooming her to _do_ wrong — could she have been the same as Kyril? Would she have even realized what was happening? Or, like Kyril, would she have strayed down the same path of willful ignorance?

 

Rey thinks she knows the answers to these questions, and she's not sure she likes it.

 

She's startled from her reverie, almost dropping the glass in her hand, when she hears the angry cawing of a raven from somewhere within the trees. It is returned by the chattering calls of its fellows.

 

To drown them out, she begins to whistle the dwarves’ song from _Snow White_ , the only thing she can pull off with any semblance of tunefulness. It's off-key but cheery, and it makes her feel better — whistling and working and being useful. Gradually, dish by dish and note by note, her spirits lift.

 

The blanket slips from her shoulders, right as she is almost finished. She is just about to turn and retrieve it when a pair of warm, thick arms encircle her waist. Kyril plasters his body to her back, his chin resting on her shoulder.

 

“Mmm,” he hums, voice husky with sleep. He sweeps a soft kiss across her cheek. “You really are like a wolf. Whistling indoors, eating with your fingers. Uncouth. Feral.”

 

“You like it,” she says, grinding her bottom against the front of his trousers, all at once feeling _more_ than ready to start something. “I'm a heathen and you _like_ it—don’t you?”

 

“You're right, I do.” One of his hands flattens against her belly. The other slides up to her breasts, palming her and circling each tight nipple languidly with his pointer finger — then he continues onwards to the hollow of her throat, coming to hold it in a firm but gentle grip.

 

“So pretty,” he murmurs, “Can I—”

 

“ _Yes,_ ” Rey moans, knuckles gone white holding onto the lip of the sink, not caring what he wants to do just so long as he does it.

 

He squeezes — lightly, barely enough to feel, just enough for throbbing, sticky heat to pool between her thighs. His cock is twitching against her, growing hard, and what Rey really wants is to sink to her knees and teach him the true meaning of _heathen_ —

 

“You want to bathe?” he asks, casual, lips against her temple, not breaking the hold he has on her throat.

 

 _Only you_ , she wants to say, is about to say, can’t quite bring herself to say. _Only you are allowed to touch me like this. I've broken other men's noses for less._

 

“Yes,” is what she gasps out, reaching around blindly in an attempt to get at his zipper — to pull him out, stroke him, show him how much she likes his possessive grip.

 

“I'll start the fire in the banya,” he says, with one final kiss. He releases her and steps away, then turns towards the living room.

 

 _Wait_ , she tries to make herself say. _Please fuck me on the kitchen table right now,_ is her next thought. _I want to feel you in my cunt for days_ , she wishes she could tell him, as he pulls on his clothes and heads for the door.

 

“Okay,” she sighs, instead.

 

. . .

 

As Kyril gathers twigs and branches from a lean-to at the side of the dacha, he communes with himself.

 

He thinks about what Rey has told him — and about how she sees herself, as a result of her childhood.

 

 _Saving the life of a boy does not make her bad or weak,_ he thinks, vexed by the very thought. He imagines Snoke might have a different opinion on the matter, but honestly, how could anyone feel anything but admiration, for that kind of bravery? No, the life she took and how she took it is what makes her _good_ — so incredibly noble, and pure, and so much more than he deserves. Even just now, he only wanted to be soft and kind, but he put his hand on her throat and felt her pulse race beneath his fingertips and he wanted her to know—

 

What? That she belongs with _him_. That she should belong _to_ him, maybe. An absurd idea, but one that has taken hold of his mind. He doesn't deserve to even _think_ it, but he can't seem to help himself around Rey.

 

So he squeezed, just a little, and — she _liked_ it. She met him, right there at the precipice. And that scared him. Kyril, a jail-hardened mobster — _she_ scared _him._ Because if Rey, who is good and pure, does not fear him — would allow herself to belong to him — then she has damned him to hope for things he cannot have.

 

 _I have been so selfish to steal this much of her time_ , he thinks. _I don't deserve to lick her fucking boots._

 

But he asked her, didn't he? He's given her chance after chance to _not_ choose him and yet she has each time, and — Kyril is left confounded, beguiled, enraptured.

 

And Snoke? _Tell me you've never felt used_ , she'd said. He couldn't, not without lying. She'd struck right at the fucking heart of it.

 

But what of it? He couldn’t walk away from the Solntsevskaya and Snoke after all these years, not with his head still attached to his body.

 

And even if he could, what of all that he's given? Is it to be forgotten, written off as a lost youth? What of everything he's worked for? Killed for? Lost? Are all of his sins to be for naught?

 

The enormity of it all rises up to crush him — years of his life spent rotting away inside prison walls, his soul blackened by sin, his father erased from existence with a single bullet, his skin forever carrying the symbols of this bloody covenant—

 

But say he could relinquish his life as a Vor. What would he become, without his illicit profession? Kyril has no hobbies, no friends, no marketable skills. None but those he has learned from the Bratva — lying, stealing, killing. Snoke told him once, after he'd been the godfather's disciple for several years, that he is a mechanism in the machine. Without him, the Solntsevskaya will simply create another Vor. Without them? He is useless. And even if he _could_ find a use for himself—

 

Does he even deserve a second chance at all of this? He's fairly certain he knows the answer.

 

And _yet_. If she told him he could eat that pretty pussy for dessert every night, from this one until his last, he thinks maybe he could _try_ to start again from scratch, with her — ostracism or failure or beheading be damned.

 

She is his goddess of rebirth, after all. Perhaps with her, he could become someone — good. Useful. Worthy.

 

 _I might say fuck it, anyway—let's roll the dice, and run away from all of this,_ he thinks, gathering some old newspaper and a box of matches from the predbannik.

 

 _Foolish, Ren_ , says a voice in his mind that sounds like Snoke's. _Careful now. It's a bit late for fairy tales._

 

There is another thought that dogs him, as he lights the tinder in the banya’s welded steel stove and puffs at the fledgling flames, checking the rocks situated in the steel trough above it and filling the water tank with cold water from a spigot in the corner:

 

If he had let Luke take him out of East Berlin, if he'd reclaimed his American citizenship and gone to New York with him — he could have met Rey years ago.

 

Fucking _Luke_ , the sanctimonious prick who rolled into East Berlin like he owned the city and presumed to lecture Kyril under his breath, so the sharp-eared German waitresses wouldn't hear, about the evils of the USSR. Luke, who never bothered to come see his mother during the divorce. Luke, who has been, to Kyril, everything that is wrong in the world for so many years.

 

His uncle could have saved him this terrible _ache_ — this knowledge of how she's suffered.

 

If he had just said _yes_ —

 

He could have caught her, maybe, before that Plutt scum had. Before any of this had happened to them.

 

Before they’d made all these _choices_.

 

 _Mostly my choices_ , Kyril acknowledges to himself.

 

He daydreams as he sweeps the spiderwebs and dust from the banya, returning to the stove periodically to stoke the fire.

 

They might have been friends, as children. It could have bloomed into young love — sweethearts, unburdened except by hormones and homework.

 

In Winter they would have made snow angels in Central Park, and drank hot chocolate together in coffee shops.

 

In Spring they would have gone to a school dance, like in the movies — Luke would have lent him a tie, she would have worn something pastel pink. They would have danced, nervous and sweating. Timidly, they would have tried to flirt.

 

In Summer they would have gone to the beach — him trying not to burn in the cloudless sparkling afternoon, her in a little bikini that would have had him holding a book in his lap the whole time.

 

In Autumn they would have raked the leaves from Luke's yard, ruddy-faced and laughing. He would have pulled her into the pile after — and hidden there in the torrid blur of vermilion and marigold, he would have given her a first kiss and received his from her in return.

 

_Every first could have been ours to share._

 

But that is not how it happened. And now they are scarred, damaged beings who have seen too much.

 

Carefully, he ladles water over the rocks, which have grown hot. They hiss and steam.

 

 _And it is my fault_ , thinks Kyril.

 

 _It’s all my fault_.

 

. . .

 

Rey watches through the kitchen windows as Kyril disappears inside the banya. She stands there for a long time, staring at the wispy smoke slithering up from the banya's chimney, vanishing into the grey sky above.

 

 _He put his hand on your throat and he squeezed and you loved it_ , she thinks, feeling branded by the memory.

 

Is she losing her mind? Is this love? Does love mean having all your preconceptions of who you are swept aside, in favor of how you appear in the eyes of someone else? Who you _might_ be?

 

If Kyril tells her she is his good girl, then is she? If she were to tell him the same, would that make it true? Could she redeem him, tattoos and all, if she _loved_ him enough? _Could_ she love him, even if he never left the Bratva? Is she capable of that level of trust, and with someone so clearly entrenched in a life of crime?

 

_Would I sacrifice everything I hold true and important, all my beliefs about doing the right thing, in order to keep this—whatever this is?_

 

To break free from the spiraling train of thought, Rey pulls on her dirty jeans and sweater, slips her feet into her unlaced Doc Martens, and clambers out into the snow.

 

There is an opened door on the side of the banya, opposite where she entered earlier this morning. Curious, she circles round the log-hewn building and steps inside.

 

What greets her is a surprise — not the dark musty room where she'd curled up before, but an entirely separate antechamber, clean and bright with sunlight streaming in from two windows, furnished with a rustic table and chairs. A cabinet is shoved against the far wall. When she pulls open one of its doors she finds towels, slippers, soap, shampoo, and a tea set on the shelves within.

 

“Предбанник,” says Kyril, from behind her. She turns to see him leaning in the doorway that divides the two halves of the small wooden cabin. He's watching her, an unreadable expression on his handsome face. “Predbannik, it means—pre-bath, more or less. The break room, when the heat becomes too much.”

 

He steps more fully into the room, pulling the door closed behind him. “The parnaya is just about ready, if you are.”

 

She nods, then audibly gulps when he pulls off his jacket and t-shirt.

 

“Rey? You okay?”

 

But Rey has forgotten how to speak, because his tattooed hands are on his fly, dragging it down — then digging into the waistband of his dark trousers, shucking them.

 

He's not wearing underwear.

 

And he's not circumsized, a characteristic every penis she has encountered in her life heretofore has shared.

 

“Naked?” she says, her voice sounding shrill to her own ears. Kyril is standing in front of her in his full glory, not hard and yet undoubtedly well endowed — and Rey's traitorous brain has decided to take a vacation.

 

He crosses the small room in a few slinking steps, stopping when he's close enough that she has to interrupt her compulsive study of his dick so she can tilt her head back to meet his solemn gaze. He twists the knobby hem of her sweater in his fingers, nostrils flared as stares down at her.

 

She doesn't know what she's expecting him to say — maybe something dark, something lascivious. But instead he murmurs, “You'll sweat through your clothes, but—if you don't want to be naked in front of me, milaya, you can wear a towel.”

 

There's a question in that suggestion, unspoken but tangible nonetheless. Rey doesn't want him to have to wonder — she wants him to know exactly where she stands. So she yanks the sweater over her head, and doesn't avert her gaze from his.

 

His eyes flick down to her breasts for a fraction of a second, he sucks in a hitched breath, and then he's looking at her face again. He smiles, just the edges of his mouth pulling slightly upward, almost undetectable. But Rey, though a neophyte, has become a devoted student of these fleeting facial tics, and she catches it.

 

The Docs and jeans go next — and then they are standing bare before each other. She gives him a bashful smile of her own, and holds up a hand for him to take. Snatching it up in his big paw of a hand, he turns and leads her into the darkened, steamy room.

 

“Parnaya,” he says, gesturing at its contents. “The steam room.”

 

The first thing she notices is that he's cleaned out all the accumulated detritus that the room bore this morning. The smell, the dust — it's gone. The room is shrouded in a light silvery mist, lit through the glass window of the big stove in flickering shades of saffron and orange.

 

The wide bench she was laying on, she can now see, actually lines two of the log walls. The other wall is occupied by the massive stove, a tray filled with rocks, and a water tank; the final houses the door to the predbannik, through which they have just passed. Kyril closes it behind them, and pads across the room.

 

The benches are two-tiered, giving the room the feel of a miniature wooden amphitheater that features a roaring stove in lieu of a stage.

 

“Come,” he says, parking himself on the slatted seat. “Sit. Sweat.”

 

She does, collapsing onto the opposite bench. Perspiration beads across her forehead, her upper lip, her chest, pooling along her lower back and tracing rivulet trails down her legs.

 

Rey already feels like she is melting.

 

She decides to go with this, and tips over, sprawling out on her back. The sweltering heat makes her tongue thick in her mouth, but she tries to work around it because when she steals a peek, Kyril is watching her again from across the room, his eyes expectant. For whatever reason, in the dim golden firelight of this room, his face made even more mysterious by the ever-changing shadows, Rey feels like he is waiting for her to say something.

 

She swallows. “That man,” she says, hushed. “The one I shot. He called you—Hanovich.” She leaves it there, hoping that now _he_ will answer _her_ unspoken question.

 

Kyril sighs, and also reclines along his bench. “It's my—former name. I changed it—when I joined the Solntsevskaya, I wanted to be my own man. But before—I was Veniamin Hanovich Solo. Ben.”

 

“Ben.” She tries it out, rolling the name around in her mouth, “Ben Solo.”

 

“I don't use it anymore,” he says, his voice edgy.

 

Rey recalls her conversation with Luke about Russian names, which feels like it happened a lifetime ago. What had he told her? The middle name comes from the father's first name.

 

“Oh—kay. But—Hanovich. That's your, um, patronym? Your father was—”

 

“Han, yes.”

 

She should probably let it go. His answers aren't exactly forthcoming — he is humoring her, clearly uninterested in discussing this topic.

 

“What’d he do in the war?” she asks, pressing forward anyway.

 

“Bomber pilot. He flew over five hundred missions. Before the war he worked search and rescue—he once saved a hundred and four people who had been stranded in the Arctic ocean after their plane crashed.” He recites these facts like he's talking about some unknowable historical figure. His detachment — it's clinical in a way that is deeply unsettling to her.

 

She's just about to change the topic when he does it for her, asking, “What do you do, in New York? For work?”

 

She watches the vapor hover in the air above her. “I teach self defense classes—Krav Maga, mostly.”

 

Kyril props himself up on his elbow, turning his head to look at her. “So you didn't _just_ save that boy's life—you save hundreds of lives.”

 

“Oh, I—” she flushes, pleased and embarrassed by his high estimation of her skills. He's barely seen her in action, but his expression is open, alight with — pride? Respect?

 

“I don't know about that,” she murmurs.

 

Kyril nods. “I do.” He sits up again, then leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees. His hair has lost its curl — heavy with perspiration and steam, he jams his hand through it to push it off his face.

 

 _It looks debonair slicked back like that_ , she thinks.

 

“What do you remember of Russia from when you were young, Irenushka?”

 

He is so _beautiful_ to her, here in this tenebrous heat where it feels like they can say anything to each other.

 

So she tells him the truth, spitting it out rapid fire, “A snowy forest, a trail of blood, a gunshot, and the ravens.”

 

He nods again, letting his head sink down between his shoulders, and falls silent.

 

. . .

 

He washes her hair, his fingers massaging her scalp. She shaves him with a razor blade he's found, slow careful swipes of the sharp edge against the jutting angles of his throat and jaw.

 

He scrubs her down with a scratchy washcloth and a bar of herbal soap, lingering on the parts of her body he loves the most. She does the same for him, allowing herself the luxury of gaping at his cock while passing over it with her soapy hand.

 

She thinks maybe that will incite something, but he only stares at her hand on him, looking — astonished? Shocked? Overwhelmed? He turns from her when she releases him, and rinses himself off with his back to her.

 

. . .

 

When they get too hot, he opens the door into the white wintry world outside and jumps naked into the snow. He calls to her to join him, but she resists, laughing as she tells him he's crazy. So he sweeps her up in a bridal carry, bringing her outside while she kicks and hollers, then gingerly sets her feet down in the cold white powder.

 

She stands there hissing curses at him until it occurs to her — this feels _good,_ despite the sting. The contrast of the cold snow on her feverish skin makes her feel alive. It makes her giggle, surprised and delighted. He leans down to kiss her, a gentle swiping of lips.

 

The interlude devolves into a brief-lived snowball fight, and — _God help her_ — when he hits her square in the face, powder dusting her cheeks and brow, he throws his head back and laughs — deep, booming, the sound of it reverberating back at them from the surrounding trees—

 

 _I_ could _love you_ , she thinks, watching the years fall away from his scarred face. _And you_ could've _been someone who laughs loudly, and often._ That realization feels like the discovery of something profoundly sacred. It leaves her breathless.

 

She shivers, overcome, and he sees it. He lifts her into his arms once more and they return to the dark, steamy environs of the parnaya.

 

. . .

 

Some time later, Rey lays on her stomach, her eyes closed. Her mind is churning like the heavy air, when he pipes up with: “No _wonder_ you took that man down so easily.”

 

She cracks one eye open.

 

He’s smiling, a real one that stretches ear to ear — it's wolfish, his eyes sparkling with playful light.

 

“And no wonder you have such a cute little popka, kicking ass all day,” he adds, drinking in her body.

 

“It was my hobby. Then it became my job,” she says, biting her lip. She drinks him in, too, and she doesn't miss the fact that his cock has grown harder, thicker, darker, is beginning to twitch upwards.

 

“I understand _that_ ,” he says, without explaining further. His dark eyes pin her to the bench, then trail away, landing on the fire. For a time, she simply lays there, tongue-tied and lust-ridden.

 

. . .

 

There is a balmy, swirling silence inside the parnaya — the atmosphere thick enough with the steam and their attraction that it does not require words.

 

Time is a tapestry — it has warp, and weft. Each minute of life is a carefully woven strand, tucked in neatly alongside its brethren. But in here, the haze of wet heat that fills Rey's lungs leaves her wilted — naked, shameless, eying Kyril's half-hard cock from across the room.

 

And time? It is behaving oddly.

 

Stretching, maybe, or shrinking — she cannot say. But it feels like each inhale takes an hour and each thought evaporates the very instant it appears. How long ago did they go outside? How long have they been in here? All her life? Or have they only just sat down?

 

Rey wants to touch him. He made her feel so _good_ , so bright and safe and wanted — and now she wants that, for him.

 

“I want—” she tries, but freezes when his eyes drift over to her. This is always the hardest part, giving voice to the things she wants. But in here — it's not so difficult.

 

She breathes deeply of the wet air. “I _want_ you.”

 

. . .

 

Kyril starts, his whole body inflamed at the thought. “Want me—how?”

 

She shoots him a warning look, still lounging on her belly, limbs akimbo, the round curve of her pert ass nearly driving him to madness.

 

He tries to draw her out with a soft smile. “Ask me for the things you want, Rey—name them.”

 

Rey pushes herself up from the bench, then seems to ooze off of it and onto the floor. Kyril feels a pang of relief that he swept so fastidiously earlier as she crawls across the wooden boards on her hands and knees, her small breasts swaying. She's hypnotizing, her eyes locked with his — he is lost to her, to this moment.

 

“I'm not good at that,” she says, wedging herself between his thighs. Kyril sits up straight to make room for her, pulling in a wet gasp at the sight of those beautiful tits so close to his hardening cock. Her hands land on each of the tattooed stars adorning his kneecaps.

 

“Try. Be strong for me, милая девушка, and tell me what you want,” he demands, voice a harsh whisper.

 

“I want to taste you,” she confesses. “But I've never been with someone who wasn't—um, cut.”

 

“I can't imagine it's very different.” He leans down to catch her in a kiss, savoring the lingering sweetness of strawberry preserves on her tongue. “We can figure it out.”

 

“Figure it out,” she echoes, taking him in hand. Delicately, she pushes the foreskin down, exposing the flushed red glans. “Will you tell me? If you like it? If I'm doing—good?”

 

“Yes,” he says, an escaped hiss of air as she runs her tongue over the sensitive, leaking tip.

 

“Kyril?” she asks, and he realizes his eyes have slammed shut. His jaw is ticking, his hands gripping the edge of the bench for dear life — the stimulus of her warm tongue, paired with the sight of her doing this, is immediately too much.

 

“Good, it's good,” he moans. “Use your hand, too.”

 

Her grip is light, almost teasing, when she runs her fist up the length of his shaft. He opens his eyes just in time to see her nod at his cock like they have reached an accord. Then she takes the head in her mouth — hot, wet and warm and silky with just a hint of her tongue pressing against the underside, almost where he wants it —

 

“ _Блядь_. The—under. Under the head, Rey—lick it.”

 

She does, pulling him in deeper — oh-so-careful to keep her teeth away and he wants to nominate her for sainthood on the basis of that alone — she runs her tongue along the sensitive skin just beneath the head—

 

He growls, a fucking _feral_ sound. She looks up at him with those clear eyes — rendered mischievous, almost wicked in the dancing firelight, and—

 

She winks, then sucks on him. He almost comes right then, the fucking minx.

 

“Kyril,” she gasps softly, letting him fall from her mouth but continuing the slow, even strokes up and down his length with her fist. “Am I—”

 

“Fuck, yes, milaya, please don't stop,” he groans, scooting forward on the bench, trying to will her to put his cock back in her mouth. “Please. I like it—you're doing so well.”

 

She licks her lips and nods.

 

“Spit. Spit on it, and suck— _fuck—_ suck harder, Irenushka,” he directs.

 

So she does. _Because she's perfect_ , he thinks. _Because she was made for me._

 

And when she applies that plush warm pressure with her cheeks, her velvet wet tongue laving at him, one hand wrapped around whatever she can't fit into her mouth and the other tentatively fondling his sack, he's so _close_ , already, this clever girl —

 

“Don't worry about the balls, fucking touch yourself—now. Legs wide, so I can see,” he snaps. This too, she gives him, he can just spy the two fingers she's rubbing against her clitoris.

 

“It's so good, milaya, you're perfect,” he babbles, teetering on the edge, needing to hear her cry out before he can allow himself to fall over. “You're so good at this, милая девушка. Everything about you is a dream, especially your hot little mouth."

 

 _Bring yourself here with me, so I can let go_ , he silently begs.

 

He tells her that she's good, so good — just for him, his good Irenushka — over and over, singing her praises — until his words devolve into incoherent Russian muttering and his hips thrust up at her. He moans, his hand shaking as he cards his fingers through her loose hair. The warm suction of her mouth — _hers_ , Rey, on him, on his dick — is obliterating his ability for rational thought. He has just enough functioning brain cells left to cry out, “Fuck, ангел, I'm gonna come!”

 

Her eyes never leave his face, her thin fingers working away at herself and she whimpers around him, sharp and high, her brow creasing. That's all he needs — he can smell her, he can see her, her mouth is so good. He feels sharp bursts of pleasure at the base of his spine, deep in his gut, his balls drawn tight — then, his world narrowing down to just his cock, Kyril comes for her.

 

The first spurt, she catches in her mouth. She rears back, letting the second and third paint her delicate clavicles in dripping white. He groans at the sight of it.

 

She's sitting there, on her knees between his legs, gasping and marked by him. _Have I claimed you now? Does this mean you will stay?_ He pets her hair, her face — leans down, fascinated, to rub his spend into her skin.

 

“God, Kyril, look at the mess we've made,” she says, glancing down at her sternum, where his hand still rests, then back up at him through her eyelashes.

 

“I guess we just have to get clean again,” he answers, cupping her breast in his hand.

 

A contented, knowing smile passes between them.

 

. . .

 

And later—

 

Wrapped in towels, they take another break, this time in the predbannik. Kyril slumps in a chair, Rey perched in his lap. They share a single cup of black tea. She kisses him lazily — his hands cradling her skull, hers kneading his shoulders, mindful of his wound — both of them moaning from the sumptuous push and pull of steam-softened lips.

 

When their heartbeats begin to calm, the heat-induced stupor finally ebbing, they head back into the shadowy, humid chamber — ready to begin sweating afresh.

 

. . .

 

Feeling wrung out but cleansed, a newborn fawn with skin made lucent from the banya’s mists, Rey settles into one of the heavy wooden chairs in the kitchen and watches as Kyril prepares a pot of soup for dinner. The sky, she can see through the windows, is turning a dusky rose color —the billowing clouds seem to hold the sun's refracted light like paint-dipped puffs of cotton. It softens the descending nightfall, making it something warm, and sensual, and welcome.

 

“Rassolnik,” he'd told her when she'd smelled the frying onions and carrots and forced herself up off the couch, wandering into the kitchen. “I found some rice and potatoes in the pantry. It won't be quite the same, because we only have dried beef and canned vegetables. But it's like—chicken noodle soup, only—”

 

“Russian?” she'd asked, and felt gratified when he huffed with amusement.

 

Their clothes, washed in the remainder of the tank’s hot water after they'd finished in the sauna, are drying in the living room — on the coffee table, pulled close to the hot stove. Rey has on the last of her clean clothing, an extra set of box-weave long underwear, and she is once again wrapped up in the knitted blanket.

 

Kyril looks comfortable — at ease, almost lackadaisical. _At last_ , she thinks, thrilling at his loose-limbed posture as though it is a personal victory. He shuffles around the kitchen in a pair of slippers and a bright red tracksuit, unzipped to reveal another plain black tee underneath. There is something in his languorous movements that reminds her of a panther, sated from a fresh kill.

 

A pot sits over the gas burner, in which the beef, a whole onion, and fried vegetables are boiling. Atop another burner, a pan of canned tomatoes is simmering. Kyril peels and slices each potato methodically, and Rey feels a pang of guilt for making him cook not one but two meals for her.

 

“Let me help with something,” she says, pushing off the chair and joining him at the counter.

 

“Find us some music?” he suggests, jerking his head towards the radio.

 

“I meant with the food.”

 

His lips twitch. “Find some music, and you can cut up the pickles after.”

 

“Pickles, in soup?” she asks, wrinkling her nose.

 

“Don't judge before you try it.”

 

“I'm choosing to trust you, but only because the blinis were such a success.”

 

She messes with the dials on the old radio for a minute, stopping when a familiar sinuous, reedy refrain of orchestral music flares to life from its speakers.

 

“Hey, I know _this_!” she exclaims.

 

“Yes, Tchaikovsky. One of his most popular, I think. _Щелкунчик, Балет-феерия._ The Arabian Dance, from _The Nutcracker."_ He pauses _._ "So you _do_ have some culture,” he remarks.

 

“Only by accident. I think we went to see that ballet on a school trip or something,” Rey says, sidling up to him. She turns and leans back against the counter, watching his hands as he works. On a whim, she reaches up and pushes an escaped lock of his hair off his strong brow, then rubs his exposed ear between her fingers.

 

“Huh,” he chuffs, coming to a complete halt. He steals a glance at her from the corner of his eyes, licking his lower lip. “I can't fuck you _and_ make dinner, milaya. Not at the same time.”

 

 _Does no one ever touch you like this? With simple affection, just because they want you to feel cared for?_ Something about that makes her ache for him, faint sorrow hammering at her chest.

 

“We don't—need to fuck. I just—wanted to touch you,” she breathes, meeting his eyes. “Because—because I can. Can't I?”

 

His shoulders drop, and he looks down at the heap of pale potato hunks, blinking. “Of course—I'm a fool. Do it again.”

 

Rey decides not to argue that point right now. She reaches for his ear, caressing the thin shell of it.

 

Kyril leans over, and presses a chaste kiss against her cheek. “Good girl,” he whispers.

 

“Woman. I'm a good _woman_ ,” she sasses back, arching an eyebrow.

 

“You are. Моя хорошая сильная женщина.” He nods, giving her a small smile, then returns his attention to the potatoes.

 

“How do you know how to cook all this stuff?” she asks, plucking a pickled cucumber from the jar and a knife from a drawer while she attempts to stifle her loopy grin. It's not that she's understood his words, but somehow, whenever he speaks to her in his mother tongue, she understands the _feeling_ he's conveying.

 

His shoulders tic upwards, the slightest of shrugs. Rey feels chastised somehow by this non-answer, and turns her focus to the pickles.

 

A pause, and then: “My father liked cooking—my mother was always very busy.” He says it so quietly she wonders if it's even meant for her to hear. “We cooked together, when I was young.”

 

She studies him in earnest now, and she thinks he can sense that, but he adamantly refuses to look at her. He adds the diced potatoes to the pot, then turns to fetch the rice.

 

 _Human kindness_ , she thinks. _That's what_ you _need._

 

“You're good too, Kyril. _I_ think there's good in you.There has to be—how else could you be so thoughtful, and so nice to me?” she asks, leaning her body against his arm when he returns to the counter.

 

“You make it easy,” he mutters, stealing another heated glance.

 

“You're good for me. My sweet handsome Russian man.”

 

At that, he turns, and pulls her into his arms. The burbling tomatoes and soup go unnoticed as they stand there, hugging. No longer able to contain her grin, she hides it in his t-shirt. She almost misses it, covered by the music, when he says:

 

“Only for you, Irenushka.”

 

. . .

 

By the time they eat, the light is gone, the world outside the windows dark with mystery. It's a peaceful meal — sharing soft smiles, her legs stretched out under the kitchen table and feet resting in his lap as she slurps up her soup, a basket of unleavened fried bread between them. After, they clean and dry the dishes side by side, elbows brushing while Tchaikovsky's swelling orchestra continues to serve as backdrop.

 

Then Kyril sprawls out on the couch, feeling spent from a day full of nothing and everything. He watches her investigate the contents of the shelves through barely opened eyes, his head tilted back against the arm of the couch.

 

Rey hums the melody from the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy as she flicks through the dusty books on one of the shelves. He knows she cannot read the titles — _Илья Муромец, Народные русские сказки, Анна Каренина, Отцы и дѣти_ — but she plucks one from the stack anyway, rifling through its pages.

 

“What have you found?” he drawls, sedate.

 

She shrugs. “Dunno. The illustrations are nice. Something about a dragon and a knight, I think.”

 

Kyril reaches for her, twitching his fingers in invitation and pushing himself into the cushions so she can join him on the couch.

 

She does, nestling in beside him.

 

“Shall I tell you the story?” He rests his lips against her still damp hair, enjoying the scent of shampoo and underneath it, something undefinable — that unique smell of a person, not any distinct perfume or aroma but rather, an _essence_. It's almost as if he can detect her beautiful spirit through the light musk of soap and sex and woman that envelopes her. He wants to bathe in it.

 

Rey nods, wrapping an arm around his waist and throwing a leg over his. “Yes, please,” she mumbles.

 

“This is a bylina, an epic poem, about Dobrynya Nikitich.” He points to the silver-armored man on the page, a pointed bogatyrka helmet on his head and gilded trim lining his flowing maroon cape. “He wasn't just _any_ knight, he was a bogatyr. Legendary, for his courage. People say he was cunning, but I always thought he was a fool. A lucky fool—like me.”

 

She snorts, a lovely wry sound that lightens his heart.

 

“His mother told him there were four things he must never do: go to the Saracen Mountains, trample baby dragons, rescue any Russians held captive, and bathe in the Puchai River.”

 

“Ten bucks says he did _all_ those things,” she says, in a dry tone.

 

Kyril pokes her in the side, and she squeaks out a little laugh. “Of _course_ he did—he was a fool. So, he was bathing in the Puchai River one day when—”

 

“Called it.”

 

“You did,” he admits, beaming at her.

 

“Let me guess—he met a dragon.” She's grinning back at him, sleepy and happy and warm, her supple body draped alongside his. He almost flings the book away right then, but—

 

Her eyes flick down to the next painting, where the armored Dobrynya wields a mighty longsword and shield, his arm pulled back, ready to strike at the six-headed dragon rearing up above him. It's roaring, and its six mouths are lined with sharp, vicious teeth.

 

“Well, yes,” he says, trying to tamp down his desire and refocus on the story. “He did. A legendary dragon, too—Zmey Gorynych. A female, very fierce.”

 

“I like her already,” Rey murmurs.

 

He presses a kiss into her hair, his lips quirked, and continues. “He defeated her. He was a fool, but a very _strong_ fool. She begged him not to kill her, though, and he agreed. They made a pact—a truce.”

 

“Peace,” she hums, her eyes slipping closed.

 

“Yes. But Zmey broke the truce, and flew to Kiev so she could steal Zabava Putyatishna, who was the niece of Prince Vladimir.”

 

Rey's breathing begins to deepen, and Kyril looks up from the page he has been translating to see if she's still awake.

 

“I’m listening, go on,” she sighs.

 

“Okay. The Prince told Dobrynya to save his niece, or he would be executed. He had no choice—he had to hunt down the dragon Zmey. Before they fought, he freed all the other Russians she had collected, except for Zabava.”

 

“Uh-oh.”

 

“Yes. And _then_ he trampled all of Zmey’s dragon children.”

 

“Kyril,” she says, smirking but not opening her eyes, “You weren't kidding. This guy was dumb as dirt.”

 

“Again, yes. But brave—when Zmey saw what he had done, she vowed never to surrender to him. So they fought each other for three days in the Saracen Mountains.”

 

He pauses, turning the page and admiring the painted illustration. An angry red sky looms behind the man and the dragon. They are both grimacing, locked in what, he supposes, must feel like an eternity of torment as they struggle against one another at the edge of a barren, rocky cliff.

 

“So? How's it end?”

 

“Dobrynya was ready to give up hope and let Zmey kill him, but a voice from Heaven told him to keep fighting for three more hours. And after those three hours, _he_ killed _her_ ,” he relates, glancing at Rey.

 

Her lips are twisted into a disappointed pout. “Damn. I was rooting for Zmey.”

 

He nods. “Well, after—and I always thought this was because he was mourning for her—he sat in a pool of her blood, which did not sink into the dirt, for three days. I think—” He looks up from the text again, searching Rey's face for a hint of her emotions. She stares back, placid and waiting. “I think he _loved_ Zmey. He couldn't admit, because men are not allowed to love dragons—but she was his equal.”

 

“And his likeness,” adds Rey, wistfully.

 

“Yes!” He winces at his own enthusiasm. “Yes. Exactly.”

 

“Is that the end? Kind of tragic, isn't it?” she asks.

 

“No, there's more. The voice from Heaven told him to drive his spear into the ground and chant something—some powerful words, an incantation—and then the earth drank in Zmey's blood. After, he was able to rescue Zabava.”

 

“And _they_ lived happily ever after?”

 

“Not quite,” he says. “Dobrynya _was_ a bogatyr, but still a peasant—he wasn’t allowed to marry Zabava. Instead, he gave her to the noble Alyosha Popovich.”

 

“Wow, _gave_? Bit presumptuous,” she says, with a little click of her tongue.

 

Kyril chuckles. “This was long ago, Rey, when the world still worked like that. And besides, after this adventure Dobrynya met a polyanitsa named Nastasia Nikulichna—the polyanitsa were female bogatyr, legendary women warriors—and _they_ married.”

 

“This Nastasia,” asks Rey, “She was like an Amazon, or a Valkyrie?”

 

“Mmm,” he hums, in the affirmative.

 

“Rad,” Rey sighs, and pushes herself up to brush a soft kiss over his heart. She takes the book from his hands, tossing it to the floor. “Kyril, when you were little, did your father tell you this story?” Her eyes are hooded, aglow with affection, and her delicate hand is making a soothing, unhurried journey across his chest, back and forth, slow strokes that make him feel cherished.

 

Him, Kyril Ren, prodigal son of no one — as Hux never fails to remind him — _cherished_.

 

“Yes,” he says, his voice a weak rasp.

 

“Did you imagine yourself as the dragon or the knight?” she queries, gently.

 

He clears his throat. “Neither—I saw myself as the Prince, waiting uselessly on the sidelines while my family was taken from me.”

 

 _We still love you_ , his mother had said, when she'd informed him of the divorce. _But we want you to have the best, and we need time to separate our lives._ His father had nodded along, seated beside her, across the kitchen table from young Veniamin.

 

 _And Berlin will be good for you_ , Han had coughed out, although his face had twisted while speaking, like he was sucking on a lemon. _You'll see more of the world. More than I ever did, except for the war._

 

_God, Han, do you have to guilt him like that? Is this really the time—_

Kyril starts, shaken by how easily he's slipped into that awful memory. Rey is peering up at him, brows drawn together and features tense with concern, so he forces himself to speak.

 

“You? Who do you see yourself as?”

 

She shrugs. “I'm the—dragon, obviously,” she says, trying for nonchalance but falling short.

 

“Wrong. You are Nastasia, the brave polyanitsa that Dobryna is blessed with after his terrible ordeal,” he counters, reaching over and dragging her body closer, closer, until he can settle on his back, her slender form resting fully on top of his. She allows this, like she allows him everything he wants. Kyril tries very hard not to cry at how _precious_ he knows this easy, idyllic moment will become to him, in hindsight.

 

“It's a beautiful story, but even with the happy ending it's—sad, kind of,” she says. She presses her cheek against his chest, her ear over his heart. He wonders if she can hear it pounding out a thunderous tattoo against his ribs.

 

“That's Russia,” he concurs. “Very old, lots of beauty—”

 

“I sense a ‘but’ coming,” she teases.

 

He lets out another heavy sigh. “There's horror, too.”

 

“The dragon?”

 

“In reality—the things we have done to each other, and ourselves,” he mutters.

 

At this Rey sits up and straddles him. Her hands planted on his chest, she frowns down at him. She bites her lip, considering her next words, then asks in a low voice, “What about what _you've_ done to yourself? Can it be undone?”

 

He knows what she's asking. It's what she asked him this morning, before she _chose_ him — and permitted him to taste her. It's what her stormy hazel eyes, so lovely and vulnerable, have been asking him since she climbed into his car. And he _can't_ say yes, he cannot tell so boldfaced a lie — not to her. But neither can he say no, and close this door that has opened between them.

 

“I don't know,” he says, the only middle ground he can find. “But you make me want to find out.”

 

She grinds her hips, her eyes still searching his. The heat of her sex is _searing_ — so close to his stiffening cock, just a few layers of soft fabric separate them. He has waited long enough, he has tried to be patient and give her time to inevitably change her mind about this — about _him_ — but she's still _here_ , still rubbing on him like a famished alleycat.

 

“Can I—” she starts, reaching for the waistband of his track pants.

 

He could just say yes, right now. He _needs_ her — his blood is screaming out for her. It's more than need, really — it's hunger. _But_ —

 

Kyril wants this to be romantic and slow and tender, wants to make love in a bed like he's her husband and this is just a normal day for them, a lazy Sunday spent resting and bathing and eating and having sex. Not a reprieve from the horrors of their lives — just a pause from the workaday grind that they cheerfully withstand together.

 

Nothing, not one thing, should bear the slightest trace of sorrow or disappointment for this darling girl who deserves so much _better_ than him—

 

“Let's go to bed,” he says, stilling her hand.

 

. . .

 

Kyril brings her to another blistering, spine-cracking orgasm with his mouth and his fingers once they've fallen into the pallet bed together. Her joyful mewling — she won't pretend that it's anything else because who cares about shame — bounces off the steep wooden beams of the ceiling. By the time he's finished, she's left boneless and panting. The tiny loft reeks of sex, hers — he hasn't even taken his clothes off yet.

 

So she helps him, letting him lift his t-shirt while she tugs down his track pants. Her hand is on his cock before he's even kicked them off — it's already bobbing proudly and deeply flushed, just for her. She crawls backwards on her knees, stroking him, paying special attention to the silky soft skin just beneath the glans, under the foreskin, because now she _knows_ that he likes that. Holding him in her fist like a divining rod, she leads him down onto the bed with her.

 

Kyril settles himself between her legs with a happy sigh, his eyes boring into hers as he pulls her thighs up to his waist, spreading her open for him. The weight of his broad, solid body on top of hers, pushing her into the mattress, making this all so real — it grounds her. He has one hand planted beside her head, the other anchored at her waist. Rey feels safe, and sheltered. Surely, she's ready for this.

 

Then he’s right _there_ , the head of his cock prodding at her swollen, sensitive entrance, his dark eyes holding her captive as he pushes forward, splitting her open—

 

Rey cries out, something between a whimper and a wail, because it's been a _while_ and Kyril is a big man and suddenly all her muscles have locked up in protest of this intrusion and she's forgotten how to breathe, isn't that unfortunate timing?

 

“Relax, milaya. Relax,” he says, gritting his teeth.

 

“Big,” she whines. “Oh _God_ Kyril, I don't know if I can–”

 

“Please. Please, you _can_ , I know you can. Just breathe—I know you can take me,” he whispers, then cranes his neck to catch her lips in a sloppy, hungry kiss, thumbing at her clitoris in concentric circles. It helps, that sweet pressure right where she needs it, but when she looks down where they're joined, she panics to see he's only about halfway inside her.

 

With a breathy groan, he begs, “What do you need? Talk to me, please, мой волчoнок, tell me what to do.”

 

Heat suffuses her face, caused by a heady cocktail of desire and self-consciousness. “Tell me I'm—”

 

She cuts herself off as Kyril slides one hand under her, pulling until she arches her spine for him, then hunches over and nuzzles at her breasts. “You're so good, милая девушка. Letting me have this, letting me fuck your tight, perfect pussy—”

 

“Yeah,” she breathes. “Like that.” Kyril sinks in just a bit deeper.

 

“Such a beautiful, strong woman, saving that boy's life,” he hums, a puff of hot breath on her skin and a shallow thrust accompanying each word.

 

“That's it,” she coos, feeling herself get wetter, her muscles beginning to slacken, everything easing up.

 

“So pretty, so _good_ for me. Do you—” he tries, then cuts himself off. He lowers himself onto his elbows, and brings his mouth to her ear. “Do you like this, Irenushka? Does it feel good for _you_?”

 

She tries to twist her neck, but he's mouthing at the skin under her jaw and she can't see his face. Still, there's _something_ in his voice —

 

 _Oh my God_ , Rey thinks, struck by her dawning understanding of what he needs from her. _We really are the same._

 

“It's more than good,” she whispers back. “It's gonna ruin me for all other men, Kyril.”

 

“Tell me you like my cock,” he moans, driving into her just a little bit harder, still not fully seated within her. “Tell me you like _me_. Tell me I _deserve_ this.”

 

She grabs his jaw at that, she has to because he sounds like he's about to cry. So she drags his face back to hers and stares him dead on, demanding, “All the way in, Kyril. Do it. Come on. I'm _trying_ , help me out here. I _need_ you—only you—you _do_ deserve it, you deserve me, and I _want_ your beautiful dick.”

 

It's lewd. It's crass. It might just be the most brazenly pornographic thing she's ever spoken aloud. Her face burns, and she's sure in the low lamplight he can see that she’s so flushed she's more tomato than woman, but it _works_. Because Kyril leans down and kisses her, grabs her hips in his big hands, and thrusts home.

 

And her body accepts him, she takes him in — the stretch, the burn, how full and pinned she feels, it's okay. Because he's not some sex god who's going to _fuck_ her. Or rather, he might be — but right now he is just Kyril, and he wants to make her feel _good_. That's all he's been trying to do since the moment they met.

 

And when she remembers that — that she's chosen to _trust_ him, that he's going to take care of her — her muscles go completely lax, limbs like melted sugar seeping into the soft mattress beneath her.

 

And he's so _deep_ , it's borderline devastating — the heat of him, the way he fills all these spaces hidden away inside her. But she welcomes this invasion now. She can't take her eyes off of him. He rolls his hips, a smooth motion he repeats again — and again and again — the burn a little less each time, the throbbing pleasure building.

 

And he doesn't look away from _her_ , either. They're so close now, almost there. His eyes riveted to hers, he brings her legs up to her chest, her knees folded between his shoulders and hers, and with a slippery hard jolt that she feels all the way up her spine, he sinks in _deeper_ — to the hilt. It's good, now — it's so _right_ , having him like this.

 

And — it's not just fucking. He keeps one hand next to her head, the other lovingly cups her cheek, straying only to pet at the throbbing nerves nestled above her cleft. He keeps leaning in to graze his lips over hers, keeps mumbling words of praise. She's tempted to tell him not to be so damned tender, because it's frying her brain. Because he's making _love_ to her, and it's beautiful, and Rey—

 

Rey is going to cry, if he keeps this up.

 

He pulls back, and the thick, slick slide of their flesh makes her keen. He plunges in, and she thinks she might die, the walls of her cunt fluttering nervously around him. She is folded into herself, breathless, just reveling in letting him do this for her, when he leans in and says, panting, “Tell me. Tell me who's fucking you right now.”

 

“You are, you are,” she says, between heaving gasps. “Kyril, it's so good.”

 

But then he sits up, extending her legs back down to the mattress. He flops down onto his side, and drags her over to him. On her side, her head on his shoulder and her leg pulled up over his waist, he drives back in.

 

Like this — he can _really_ kiss her. So he does, relentlessly, hot hands on her back holding her body close. He drinks in her breath, his lips on hers, then dusts kisses along her cheek, all the while rocking against her. It's so _intimate_ — their eyes locked, watching each other fall apart, or kissing, his chest solid against hers — and Rey, who has always insisted on taking it from behind or being on top — she _loves_ this.

 

 _Only you_ , she thinks. _Only you, only you, only you._

 

She wraps her arms around his neck, lost in the sinuous rhythm of their bodies, in the feel of him, how he grinds against her exactly where she needs it.

 

“Ben,” he says. “Call—you can call me Ben. Who's fucking you, milaya? Who's making you feel good?”

 

“ _Ben!_ ” she cries. “You are, Ben.”

 

“You're a gift, a dream,” he tells her, frenzied and grunting, one thumb sneaking down to knead her clitoris, giving it to her just right. “You're _my_ dream.”

 

Those words, the fervent tone that so perfectly matches the unhinged hunger she feels for him, it's just what she needs. It's like he's flipped a switch — she clenches down hard, and comes for him. Her nerves practically ignite with voluptuous abandon, cunt spasming, raised leg kicking at nothing, toes curled.

 

Maybe there's no more barrier between her mind and her mouth, melted away like her defenses by the sultry heat of his cock, his sweat-dampened skin on hers — because as her body continues to quake she sobs, “You're everything I ever wanted!”

 

“Ah,” he chokes out, a guttural noise accompanied by a few convulsive, jerky thrusts. And then he stills. Wet heat blooms within her as he clutches her in his burly arms, his face hidden in the crook of her neck, coming with a groan — inside her, and that wasn't smart, but she'll think about that later, because when he relaxes his hold and pulls out of her, he gazes at her like she's hung the moon and —

 

Rey kisses him, slow, their tongues dancing. Their chests rise and fall in synchrony, winded from emotion or exertion or both.

 

He curls himself around her and breathes sweet Russian nothings against her skin. She burrows into the hard planes of his body, finding where he is soft and caressing him there. He hums, gliding his hands along the sharp angles of her body, and presses his full lips to hers once more.

 

And Rey? She feels cherished. She feels right. She feels _strong_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Some notes. Up first, translations!
> 
> "Беспризорники." _[Besprizorniki]_  
>  **abandoned children**
> 
> "Мой бедный волчoнок." _[Moy bednyy volchonok]_  
>  **My poor little wolf**
> 
> "...милая девушка..." _[milaya devushka]_  
>  **sweet girl**
> 
> "Блядь." _[Blyad]_  
>  **Fuck**
> 
> "...ангел." _[angel]_  
>  **angel**
> 
> "Щелкунчик, Балет-феерия" _[Shchelkunchik, Balet-feyeriya]_  
>  **[The Nutcracker](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutcracker)**
> 
> "Моя хорошая сильная женщина." _[Moya khoroshaya sil'naya zhenshchina.]_  
>  **My good strong woman**
> 
> "Илья Муромец" _[Ilya Muromets]_  
>  **[Ilya Muromets](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Muromets)**
> 
> "Народные русские сказки" _[Narodnye russkie skazki]_  
>  **Russian Fairy Tales**
> 
> "Анна Каренина" _[Anna Karenina]_  
>  **[Anna Karenina](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina)**
> 
> "Отцы и дѣти" _[Otcy i deti]_  
>  **[Fathers and Sons](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers_and_Sons_\(novel\))**  
>   
> 
> Name meanings!  
> [Phoebe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebe_\(given_name\)) means "bright and shining", derives from the Greek "Phoebus" and was a Titan of the moon on Greek mythology.  
> Bobby has no particularly important meaning, although [Robert](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert) does mean "fame-bright' in Old German. Mostly, though, it just sounds like the name of an adorable little droid we all know and love.  
>    
> Links!  
> How do you [treat](https://www.advancedtissue.com/traumatic-stab-wounds-long-term-wound-care/) a leg wound?
> 
> Writers asking each other how the hell to [write about](https://aminoapps.com/c/books/page/blog/writing-realistic-injuries-stab-wounds/6Miz_uGWzRQ73qwx3KdlLZ5xBwRrQK#media-b429c897) leg wounds! XD
> 
> An abstract about a teenage boy who was [stabbed](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/433820?redirect=true) in the leg.
> 
> Stab [wound](http://m.forensicmed.webnode.com/wounds/sharp-force-trauma/stab-wounds/) info. Heads up: this link has some gnarly pictures!
> 
> An incredible leg wound/surfing accident [survival story](https://stabmag.com/news/mark-mathews-i-was-one-hour-from-losing-my-leg/)!
> 
> I know [nothing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justifiable_homicide) about [the law](https://criminal-law.freeadvice.com/criminal-law/juvenile_law/new-york-juvenile-crimes-how-system-works.htm), except what any self-respecting Law & Order fan _thinks_ they know!
> 
> [Orphans](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_in_the_Soviet_Union) have a very sad, complicated past in the Soviet Union.
> 
> What/who were [Club Kids](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_Kids)? Was [The Limelight](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limelight) a real club? (Yes!)
> 
> A [Rassolnik](https://waytorussia.net/WhatIsRussia/RussianFood/Soups.html) recipe, along with some other Russian soups!
> 
> What's a [banya](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banya_\(sauna\))? Want a more in-depth [history](http://banyasf.com/pages/history-bathing)? Want to download a _very_ detailed PDF on how to [prepare](https://www.google.hu/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://roblichtcustomsaunas.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Using-and-maintaining-your-wood-fired-sauna.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjXkZP46pnbAhWCE5oKHcWSAuoQFjALegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw0oAxlf_XuOSs9DrsYzqGE8) your banya for use?  
>     
> Who was [Tchaikovsky](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Ilyich_Tchaikovsky)?
> 
> What's a [bylina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bylina)? A [bogatyr or polyanitsa](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogatyr)?
> 
> Who was [Dobrynya Nikitich](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobrynya_Nikitich)? Here is an [illustration](https://russianfolklore.tumblr.com/post/168554500086/zmey-gorynych-by-viktor-vasnetsov-in-slavic) that inspired me, if you're interested!
> 
> A book of [_Russian Fairy Tales_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Fairy_Tales), if anyone is interested!
> 
>  
> 
> Anyone catch the Jane Eyre reference? Alright that's all for me for this chapter. Thank you for reading!


	6. то, что осталось

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that which is forsaken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are awesome. That is all. Your feedback, your interaction — it keeps me young. Please, if it's something you want to do, keep it coming! If not, thank you so much just for reading ❤
> 
> Have I got some **beautiful** art for you today! [selunchen](https://selunchen.tumblr.com/post/174501116442/and-rey-she-knows-there-are-more-words-to-be) did a gorgeous illustration of the kitchen scene from chapter 4 and [mrsvioletwrites](https://mrsvioletwrites.tumblr.com/post/174504225233/fic-art-commission-for-voicedimplosives-go-i) made this fabulous pop art portrait of our 90's babies in all their ushanka-and-adidas-wearing glory! I am so enthralled by both of these pieces, seriously go check them out and their other wonderful art as well!
> 
> And of course it goes without saying but I will _never_ not say it: my beta reader [Kachenka](Https://luminousreylo.tumblr.com) is the reason this chapter is a coherent, logical narrative XD
> 
> Quick warning: there is once again some very very **light breathplay**. Again, not enough to restrict any airflow. It happens when Rey and Kyril return to the car after their adventure in Vershinino.
> 
> On to the tale!

Kyril wakes to a clear morning — the sun, reflected off the snow, sends flashes of brilliant stippled light skittering across the golden beams of the oaken ceiling.

 

There is a cocoon of heat beneath the blankets, a warm body melded to the side of his bare back, a soft droning snuffle in his ear. He is laying on his stomach, legs stretched to the foot of the bed; when he turns his head he finds that in her sleep, Rey has attached herself to him like a starfish, one lithe leg and arm thrown across him, her face squished against his right bicep.

 

She is snoring. Just a little.

 

She is also gyrating her hips, in her sleep — crushing her sex against his uppermost gluteal muscles, right where they meet his back. A shock of furious, pulsing lust twinges in his groin; he has to bite the inside of his cheek to stifle his groan. Her cleft is hot on his bare skin, and — he thinks, he hopes — wet, too.

 

_Are you having a sweet dream, milaya? Am I in it? Are you reliving what we did last night?_

Another minute roll of her hips has her slightly more open — Kyril can _feel_ how slick she is now. He gently dislodges her, just enough so he can roll over onto his back — still sheltered beneath the slight weight of her arm and leg.

 

“Hmph,” she groans, squeezing her eyes shut tighter to block out the brilliant morning light. She presses her face into his pectoral.

 

“Good morning,” he murmurs, dragging her close to press a kiss against her cheek. “What were _you_ dreaming of, Irenushka?”

 

“I'll tell you,” she says, a throaty chirr, “after you make me some coffee.”

 

“That's a fair trade.” He caresses the delicate bridge of her nose, the careening curve of her upper lip, the wisps of chestnut hair that lie across her youthful cheeks. The smile she gives him as she blinks herself to wakefulness is groggy, but tender.

 

He slips out of the bed with a kiss to her brow, then pulls on his track pants and climbs down the ladder. In short order he has a fire roaring in the stove, and sitting on top of it, a Turkish cezve, filled with fine coffee grounds, sugar and water. He hears her slip out the front door while he's filling a pot with water and grechnevaya kasha.

 

“Mmm,” she hums, toeing off her unlaced boots after she comes back in. “Smells good.” When he opens his arms to her, she happily steps into his embrace. Her head is chilled, hair carrying the sharp clean scent of winter morning.

 

He gives the contents of the cezve a stir, reluctant to take his eyes off of it. Kyril knows from experience — and many, many burned fingers — that Turkish coffee is slow to boil until the moment you look away — then it is exuberant in its rapid, swelling overflow.

 

“Cups?” she asks, laying a chaste kiss over his heart.

 

“The small ones in the cabinet,” he tells her, with a gentle pat on her derriere.

 

Rey disappears into the kitchen and returns with two tiny china cups, into which Kyril pours the thick, frothy brew.

 

After they've seated themselves on the couch, Kyril's arm casually flung around Rey's shoulders, her legs resting across his thighs, she shoots him a sidelong glance, then flushes, almost imperceptibly. He resists the urge to tear the coffee from her hands and ravish her right there, but — it's a close call.

 

“So,” he starts, trying for a nonchalant tone. “Dream of anything special?”

 

“You mean you don't already know? You _were_ there, after all.”

 

And Kyril, he thinks that maybe he is blushing too because his ears are hot, his heart pounding. He wonders, gazing at her seraphic features, if maybe they couldn't just stay here forever. He imagines it — long cold nights spent under the covers, languorous days spent tending to their dachniki responsibilities. Cooking, cleaning, farming — the only things stolen would be kisses as they work, the only things killed, the animals they raise — touching her any time he pleases, relaxing into afternoons filled with the mellow conversation and soft, sweet sex —

 

 _We could buy a goat,_ he muses. _And plant cucumbers beside the juniper bushes. There's room for an addition on the side of the dacha—we could build a nursery._

 

“Kyril,” says Rey, interrupting his reverie.

 

“Mmm?”

 

“Finish your coffee.” Her voice is breathy, her hazel eyes dark, hungry. She dangles her empty cup from her dainty pinky finger.

 

He knows — oh, he _knows_. But he wants her to say it; because he loves hearing the words tumble from her pretty pink lips, because he loves how it makes her blush, because he loves how wet she gets when she's strong, and tells him what she wants.

 

So he asks, blithely, “What's the rush?”

 

Rey pouts at him.

 

“Come on, milaya,” he rasps. “Be good for me.”

 

She takes a breath, then bites her lip. God, he loves that, too. In a low, ragged tone, she orders, “Finish your coffee so I can ride your perfect cock.”

 

He downs the scalding remains in one swallow and tosses the cup — somewhere — and then his hands are on her waist, tugging until she settles astride him.

 

And when they're stripped to just bare their skin again, Kyril slumped down low on the couch, a lapful of Rey and two of his fingers inside her exquisite cunt — twisting a soft orgasm out of her, how prettily she croons for him — Kyril thinks: _surely, surely_ this _is what all of my sins have been for._

 

Because were it _not_ for the Solntsevskaya, he would not have been driving to Vologda on the M8 Highway two days ago. Rey would have waited for a bus on the side of the road for God knows how long, and then? Maybe she would've been lucky in her travels, her search for her truant family — maybe not.

 

But Kyril never would have been given this — her lips on his, the taste of sweet dark coffee passed between their tongues, the luxury of watching her svelte body jerk and writhe as he plays with her clitoris, her walls clenching down on his fingers, her hands tugging at his hair, her joyful trilling sigh —

 

“Ben,” she says, bashful suddenly, gasping for air as he eases his digits out of her, still petting her sopping folds. “What—do you—do you like—my body?”

 

“ _God,_ yes.” He tears his eyes away from her beautiful bare cunt, letting them wander up the flat, sharp-edged planes of her abdomen, the striated muscle overlaying her ribcage, the rosy upturned nipples on her cheerful little tits, her sinewy arms reaching for his hair, the graceful protrusion of her collarbones, the soft skin of her neck and cheeks, her silken brown hair tossed to one side of her head, the moans escaping those lips, those _eyes_ —

 

“I hate my knees,” she lets slip, then gives a wry chuckle at her own admission.

 

Kyril grins. “I hate my ears,” he confesses. “And my nose.”

 

“No, no.” She runs the tip of her pointer finger down his beak of a nose, then around the jutting sidecars of his ears. “I love your nose. And your ears. They're manly. So— _you_.”

 

“I love your knees,” he says, a lump in his throat. “And your legs. They're graceful. Like a deer’s.”

 

The lopsided smile she gives him is full of unspoken gratitude, as if it is _him_ who has given _her_ a gift, and not the reverse. One hand on his shoulder, one hand on his cock, Rey positions herself over him. She sinks down, just onto the head, and her cunt — it's so fucking _tight_ , so silky wet and warm and most importantly, so _Rey_ —

 

“But I love your eyes most of all,” he wheezes, through clenched teeth, holding onto her hips to help steady her, help her take him all in. “They say so much. I look at your eyes and you give me just what I need, милая девушка.”

 

Her breasts jounce slightly as she tilts her hips forwards, tips her chest back, bending her spine — never taking her eyes off him — and eases down, down, down. This good woman, taking such good care of him—

 

The delicate bare skin of her vulva meets the wiry hairs of his groin, and they moan in perfect harmony. She tugs on his neck until he tears his eyes away from the sight of himself buried to the root within her — voluptuary, fluttering heat, the lush drag of her walls on his cock making him feel like a god.

 

His good girl. His good, perfect girl. How has he come to be here, to be cared for like this? Surely, as sure as the red in his ledger, as sure as the ink ingrained in his dermis — surely he does not _deserve_ this.

 

Kyril is held captive, spellbound by the obscene way her folds are parted around him, how he splits her open. How she lets him do it — how she invites him in. _Does_ he deserve this? Last night, Rey looked him in the eyes and told him he _does_. The memory sends a shiver through his body.

 

“Ben,” she moans, soft, still working her hips. “Ben, what's wrong?”

 

“Huh?” he asks, glancing up from where they are joined.

 

Rey brings her free hand, the one not holding onto his uninjured shoulder, to his face. She rubs a gentle path across his cheek with the pad of her thumb, then shows it to him: it is glistening wet. Oh.

 

Kyril is crying.

 

“I just—” he coughs, incapable of thinking up some valid reason why he should be crying when she's looking at him so affectionately, her plush pussy giving way for him, her tits bouncing at his eyeline. “I, uh—”

 

She lifts her hips, then twists a little as she grinds down. Her eyes are on him, and they're shining more brightly than normal. A tear beads up, then another — they surmount the fence of her bottom lashes and race their way down her cheeks. The bruise fanning out beneath her right eye has turned a moody purplish indigo, and the wet trail left behind by her tears — now another, and another spilling over — makes the contusion glimmer.

 

 _Do you feel this too?_ he ponders, dragging his thumb across her uninjured cheekbone, then bringing it to his lips to taste. Salt. His good girl, crying for him. _Do you feel this need, this yearning? Do you watch me the way I watch you, sense me the way I sense you?_ Kyril tells himself not to say these things out loud. He vows that he won't. He focuses on the feel of her on his cock, redirects his gaze to her luscious tits, bringing his hands up to hold their soft swaying weight in his palms. _Don't say it_ , he commands. And yet—

 

“I love—” he gasps, then bites down hard on his tongue to bar anymore of the sentiment from escaping.

 

“I know.” She leans forward until the tight buds of her nipples are crushed against his chest, her petal-soft lips brushing the thin shell of his ear. _How can she know, how to make him feel like a whole man? How does she do it without even trying, just by existing here with him?_ He grabs hold of her pert behind, one round cheek filling each of his hands. Only her hips are still moving, still rolling, her hands brushing his hair back from his face — it's so good and thrusting up to meet her, he wants it to be _forever_ —

 

“Its okay, Ben,” she murmurs in his ear. “I know.”

 

. . .

 

When they are finished, sated, Rey lazes in his lap. He's gone soft inside her, the nerve endings in his dick screaming out in overstimulated protest, but he can't quite bring himself to pull out. And Rey? She's made no move to climb off him.

 

They take their time coming down from the peak they have traversed together — their return eased by the susurrus of the fire crackling in the stove, melting snow dripping from the eaves of the dacha. Their touches are soft, light, careful.

 

“Ben,” she starts, then seems to change her mind. A moment later, she tries again, “Kyril. What you said—when—did you—”

 

“Yes.” _Is that enough_? he wonders. _For the words to ring unvoiced but acknowledged in both our ears?_

 

“Me too. I mean, I think it could be,” she sighs — smile loving, gaze considering.

 

 _‘Could be’ isn't the same as ‘is,’_ hisses his jealous heart. _It's close enough,_ he tells it.

 

And then, from Rey: “Oh!”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“Wait here.” She pulls away him, and stumbles over to her canvas backpack, forgotten on the floor by the bookshelves. When she bends over, she gifts him with a magnificent view of her ravaged, puffy cunt. _God, I did that,_ Kyril thinks, his dick twitching at the sight. With a triumphant little shout, she saunters back across the room and deposits herself in his lap once more, a small black box in her hand.

 

“Okay, I know I look like shit with this eye and it will probably be really obvious to whatever poor dope has to develop these that we just had sex, but—”

 

She loops her arm around his neck, leaning in until they are cheek to cheek, then holds a cardboard-covered plastic camera up and out, at arm's length.

 

“Smile,” she murmurs, turning to press her lips to his jagged scar.

 

He does.

 

. . .

 

Later, when they are sitting at the kitchen table eating the sweet grainy porridge he has prepared — grechnevaya kasha, buckwheat groats and canned milk and sugar — Rey takes a sip of her tea and says, calmly, “I think I'm ready for you to tell me.”

 

Her eyes shine, her face is open. She is wrapped in the knitted blanket like a queen in her finery. She looks, to Kyril, like she's come to him bearing the milk of human kindness.

 

“About?” he prompts.

 

She takes a deep breath. “The tattoos.”

 

He knew, didn't he? He's known from the second he asked her, sitting outside the train station of Vologda, to come to his hotel room — he knew they would end up here. _That doesn't mean I have to be happy about it_ , he thinks, a sour sinking feeling in his gut.

 

“Which?” He looks down, inspecting the sordid inked regalia of his chest and belly. _Maybe she won't ask about the worst ones._

_Maybe she should, though._

 

“The stars, here?” she asks, leaning forward to lay her hands on track pant-covered knees.

 

“I kneel to no man, only to God,” says Kyril, monotone, unwilling to tear his gaze from her hands. He cannot look at her, he cannot watch _this_ be taken away from him, too—

 

“These?” She pulls his right hand into hers, brushing her thumb over the orthodox cross ensconced in a simple, four-lined diamond that sits upon the knuckle of his ring finger. On the other fingers, his pointer and middle — two simpler crosses.

 

“My status as a Vor, and the sentences I have served in prison,” he says, his voice thick. Her hand looks so delicate in his, her thin fingers elegant in comparison to his brutish paw—

 

“It's alright, Kyril,” she tells him, and she sounds — compassionate. Understanding. Still, he cannot bring himself to meet her eyes. “This?”

 

She glides her hand up his thigh, to his navel — and from there, up to his sternum, over the massive church, her fingers a warm and soft pressure against his tattooed skin. She comes to a halt at the pointed top of one of the bulbous spires.

 

“My life. As a criminal. And how many years I was inside. One dome for each year.”

 

“Okay,” she says. “Okay. So—six years. Okay. This?” Her hand is on his right pectoral, prodding at the scarred, simplistic rose above his nipple.

 

“Also prison. I turned eighteen, during my first stint. It was—a rite of passage.”

 

“Oh, Kyril,” she says, a quavering sigh, and then he _does_ look up.

 

Sympathy. Her brows drawn together, she chews on her lip. She _cares_.

 

“That's awful.” Rey lifts her hand to his face, cupping his cheek. “Do you want to stop?”

 

“No,” he huffs. “Ask me. You should—you deserve to know.”

 

“Oh—kay,” she murmurs. Without speaking, she taps her fingers against the bloody knife that lies across the swell of his trapezius muscle, between his right shoulder and the right side of his neck. She lifts her brows in silent query.

 

“In prison. I—killed. I wasn't—there was no proof, they couldn't pin it on me. It was during a riot.”

 

Rey nods, her eyes wide.

 

“Three drops of blood.” He gestures to them, where they drip from the tattooed blade. “Three lives. Tambovskaya.”

 

She swallows and nods again. Gently, she traces the puckered scar down from his neck to his chest. “This?”

 

“The мудак you shot in Vologda. Morozov.”

 

“The one who called you Hanovich.”

 

“He knew my father. When we were locked up together—during my second sentence, one day he was—baiting me. Said he knew my father had been a rat, and rats—get eaten. Called me a rat catcher. That's what he said.”

 

“So you fought him.”

 

“He was faster than me. One minute we're trading insults, and I'm angry, I can barely see straight I'm so angry, the next—half my face is cut open wide. He had a shiv.”

 

“God, Kyril,” she says. “Fuck. That's so— _awful_.”

 

He shrugs, or at least, he tries to. “Could've been worse. Could've gotten infected. That it didn't—that's what passes for lucky, in prison.”

 

Her fury radiates around her; a heavy miasma of regret and fear and anger hovers in the kitchen air.

 

“I'm _glad_ I killed him,” she hisses. “I'll never feel bad for that, not ever again.”

 

“Rey,” he says, at the same time that his brain is screaming at him to _stop stop stop, shut up idiot don't say anything it might go unnoticed—_

 

“You should know all of it. Ask me—ask me about this one.” He points to the hooded executioner wielding a sharp blade, on the inside of his bicep.

 

When her eyes flit to where he's pointing, he is of two minds. Part of him is screaming: _no, no, no, not ready to wake up yet from this beautiful dream—_

 

But another part, the part which has been lured by Rey into the promised land of _hope_ , knows this: if he does not confess, open his soul to her and show her the darkest, ugliest depths, he will never know for certain if she could truly love him as he is.

 

“Tell me,” she says, hushed — fearful.

 

“It was given to me—” he coughs, the words fighting back, refusing to be unleashed upon her, “after I killed a family member.”

 

The blood drains from her face. She's gone ashen, her breathing unsteady. She sits back in her chair, hands folded in her lap — saying nothing, her mouth hanging open, brow furrowed and staring at him like, _oh God_ , like —

 

Free fall. Plummeting, he is Icarus — his waxen wings melted by the brilliant, blazing light of her pure soul. How arrogant has Kyril been, to think that he could confess this misdeed to a woman with no parents, and still expect her to care for him?

 

“Oh,” she says at last, so soft that the roaring rush of blood in his ears almost drowns it out. “Do you have any—was it—you never mentioned a brother or sister—” She's stuck, he can tell, and he shouldn't make her say the words, but he _can't_ say them himself, not when she's looking at him like that, so lost, so confused —

 

Her lower lip trembles, but she forges ahead anyway. “Was it—Luke told me his sister is still alive, so—it was your father, wasn't it.”

 

Not a question, not an accusation. Merely a fact, stated in the resigned, weary tone of someone who has just realized that she's had congress with a monster.

 

“Yes,” he says.

 

“Why? Why would you—”

 

“He'd turned informant,” he blurts out. It's easy now, now that he's been flayed alive by that look of horror on her face, now that he's fallen back to earth and is speaking to her from the muck and the mire. “We had reports. Snoke sent me to do it—to prove my loyalty. And because—he said I could be merciful, and make it quick. That's not something many Vori would've given my father.”

 

“ _Quick_ ,” she parrots back, dazed.

 

“Just—a bullet.”

 

“But the others? The other, um, Vori—”

 

“It's hard to say. There are certainly more gruesome ways to die,” he says, hoping against hope this hint of an explanation is enough.

 

“Ah.” She bobs her head, like she is trying to nod — or maybe doesn't realize she is trembling. “Why didn't you—”

 

“What, try to save him?” Kyril doesn't want to raise his voice, but it happens anyway, without his meaning it to. “You can't—there was no _choice_ , Rey. I had to.”

 

“What about—your mom? Isn't she, I mean, doesn't she have some kind of influence?”

 

Kyril shakes his head, as if trying to prevent the thought from landing on him. He laughs, but it's a bitter, dried out husk — a twisted parody of true laughter.

 

“She doesn't want anything to do with me. Last time I saw her was on my eighteenth birthday. She came to see me in prison, you know what she said?”

 

Rey bites her lip, then shrugs.

 

“She couldn't save me. _You're too far gone._ That's what she told me. She said her position was too precarious, what with the tensions between us and America, and my father didn't have the clout he once did. She said— _sorry Ben, you're on your own._ She said she couldn't understand me, and she never would. That was our last meeting, Rey. I was in prison, I was afraid for my life, I was just a fucking kid, I had fallen so far and—”

 

He stops himself. If he doesn't quit talking this instant, the whole sad, ugly story will come pouring out, like a purging of his poisonous misery. And what's the point? She already knows most of it. And Rey may not be glaring at him, she may not be calling him names or spitting in his face, but she's not gazing at him fondly anymore, either. She looks as miserable as he feels. More, maybe.

 

“Milaya—” he tries, his tone softened.

 

But it is Rey who cuts him off now. “Okay,” she says, sounding brittle.

 

And this — this is what he has expected all along. This uncertain tone, her pale face — _this_  is what he deserves. But it's still shocking, how deeply it wounds him.

 

She continues, “Okay. I—understand. I'm sure it's—it was—difficult.”

 

He nods, his eyes burning, throat raw, stomach heaving. _Don't leave, don't leave, don't leave…_

 

For one excruciating minute, and then another, and then another — piling up like a frozen snow bank between them — they sit in silence. Rey worries at her bottom lip, tracing the outlines of the geometric scarlet roses in the tablecloth. Her eyes are fixed there, refusing to meet his own.

 

At last, she speaks. “I think—we should head for Vershinino today. I've been so—well, I came here for a reason, Kyril.”

 

“Yes,” he agrees, nodding dejectedly. “Of course.”

 

Kyril has been thinking they would have more time; of all the things she could ask of him, he didn't expect this request so soon — not when they've only just arrived two nights ago. There is something he needs to explain to Rey, a rumor he's heard about the villages of Siberia, something he has pushed to the far edges of his mind, unwilling to think about, something he tried to hint at on the first day they'd met, before he knew how fast he'd fall for her, but—

 

He doesn't know where to begin. He can't find the words and in his heart, he knows that this is because he has already been the source of too much pain for her.

 

Besides, there's a chance that the rumors aren't true. This Vershinino place — it might be different. He doesn't know for sure, and there's no way for Rey to find out except to go there.

 

And frankly, he is simply grateful Rey is still using the word 'we’ in reference to their plans. For a little while longer, she will grace him with her light — seared though he may be from it, he will take this. He'll take whatever she's willing to give.

 

“Of course,” he repeats, when she gives his hand a gentle pat. She wears that wan smile, the one from Vologda, and she won't meet his eyes as she rises from the chair, leaves the kitchen.

 

“Anything you want,” he says, to the empty room.

 

The Solntsevskaya may have put Rey in his path, may have granted him stolen time with her — but Kyril knows, despite his pointless dreaming, that it will be the thing that takes her from him too. Staring at nothing, he thinks to himself — _this is what you deserve. This is what your life will always be._

 

. . .

 

As they tromp through the snow to the Lada, Rey feels the urge to look back. She knows, in her heart, that she will never see this place again, and she wants to take it in, one last time.

 

With a start, she remembers the camera. She rifles through her bag until her fingers grasp the cardboard edge of it. She glances at Kyril, who watches her impassively, his hand resting on the open driver's door.

 

She looks back to the dacha. If she weren't feeling so conflicted about him and his bloody history, she would give Kyril a tour of her emotions at this moment, in the same manner he showed her around the landmarks of Rostov.

 

She would tell him: _Here is where I think I fell in love with you, in the span of one perfect day. Here is where you made me feel so good I cried. Here is where I trusted you. Here is where you helped me to feel strong._

 

 _Here is where I was happy. Here is where I allowed myself to dream_.

 

_Here is where I felt despair._

_Here is where—_

_I felt hope._

 

She snaps the photo, her eye held close to the glass viewfinder lens to ensure the dacha is framed correctly.

 

Then she turns away, and lowers herself into the passenger seat. As they drive off, she does not look back again.

 

. . .

 

Once they have made their way back to the nearest country highway, they pull over and consult the road map Rey has discovered in the glove compartment.

 

They've gone farther west than she would have guessed, although she supposes the lion's share of their journey in that terrible whirlwind after leaving Vologda was made by moonlight and high beams. So she is pleasantly surprised when Kyril tells her, his lips pursing and unpursing with heavy emotion as they have been all morning, that they are only about three hours away from the village of Vershinino.

 

There isn't much talking after that. Once they find the northbound road that will take them most of the way to Lake Kenozero, upon whose shores Vershinino is situated — well, it borders on awkward. Rey turns on the radio, dying for _something_ to fill the heavy, dull silence. She flips through stations until she catches the rich strains of an orchestra, then leaves it, knowing that Kyril likes this kind of music. He nods absently at her choice.

 

It's a good soundtrack anyway, a dark and moody piece with wailing violins and a menacing horn section, rumbling drums — the perfect music for brooding. And brooding is what Rey wants — _no, needs_ — to do right now. Because what Kyril has told her, the wretched details of the tattoos he has disclosed —

 

Rey is shaken.

 

But why, though? She _knows_ Kyril is a criminal; she's known since Vologda that he has blood on his hands. What difference is it to her, whose blood he wears?

 

 _Don't be obtuse_ , she thinks. _You_ know _why this is different. His father. His own fucking father._

 

She steals a peek at him. He has been taciturn, mute practically, since she left him sitting in the kitchen of the dacha — and she wanted, oh how she wanted to be callow enough to forgive him with easy words for the thing he has done, but it _hurts_ her—

 

His tattooed knuckles are white on the wheel and the gearshift, his jaw ticking from how tightly he clenches it. He's dressed in one of his dark suits again. His entire heavy frame is tensed; practically stooped over the wheel, he glares at the glittering snowy forests, the cracked and rolling highway, the cloudless sky.

 

 _How could you do it? How could you kill your own father?_ she wonders. _Every time I think I know you, you find a way to surprise me, hurt me, break my heart without even doing anything to me—_

 

What Rey wants, what she thinks would simplify the insane mess her life has become, is to simply hate him.

 

 _Murderous snake!_ she could spit at him. _Patricidal monster!_

 

Wouldn't she be right? Yes, factually speaking, she'd be correct. But emotionally?

 

Rey turns in her seat and regards Kyril. Ben, she sees the ghost of a sullen boy named Veniamin, in the overcast pallor of his sulking face. She really studies him. He darts her a nervous glance, then returns his eyes to the road. Without looking away from it, he turns up the volume of the music. Still she stares, unabashed.

 

 _How did you become this way?_ she wants to ask. _How could you have let this world—this Snoke person—force you into the role you have assumed?_

 

And of course: _why didn't you wait for me to find you?_

 

Then, finally, the thing that twists her stomach, that makes her skull throb with blistering, pounding guilt: _why don't I hate you? You, who are not an unquestionably good man? You, who have sinned so deeply?_

_Shouldn't I only be able to love a good man?_

 

What does it say about her, if he killed his father and she doesn't hate him? She shies away from that thought — it's too raw, too close to the marrow.

 

_Are you evil, or just a survivor? With our backs against the wall—real or imagined—is there really any difference? Is it better to let yourself be eaten alive, martyr to your despair, or to thrive by less than savory means?_

 

And again, ad nauseum: _how could you do it?_

 

She continues wrestling with herself. She cares about him, he's done bad things. Can she forgive the bad things? Would _she_ have done these bad things? She thinks she wouldn't have, but then — how can she be certain? Maybe she would've. She's felt anger towards her mother for dragging her to a strange land then dying, plenty of times. Who's to say? Around and around she goes. One hour passes, then two. At some point they turn from the northbound road onto one headed west.

 

Eventually they crest the subtle peak of another rolling hill and in the distance, beyond the pine-filled valleys, she sees it, remembering its name from Kyril's translation of their map — the flat white expanse of Lake Kenozero, stretching out for miles before them.

 

 _It won't be long now,_ she thinks, nervous excitement unfurling in her chest. Her anticipation almost eclipses her anguish over Kyril's revelation.

 

Almost.

 

Onwards. On and on they hurtle, chasing the past — his a violent spectre, hers a diaphanous shade.

 

. . .

 

Kyril feels that sour sinking sense of doom again as they drive along the lakeside road leading north to Vershinino. With each village they pass, the foreboding is exacerbated, until he is a twitching nervous wreck. Rey has fallen deathly silent, taking in the sights around them with a stoicism that further gnaws at Kyril's nerves.

 

Each of the villages — some no more than a handful of houses, some as big as small towns — is in a state of utter disrepair. Caved in roofs, shattered windows, doors with peeling paint that hang off their hinges, darkened entrances that gape like ravenous mouths, crumbling churches with tilted, rotting towers—

 

And not a soul to be seen.

 

They are all abandoned, empty. Ghostly ruins.

 

When they finally enter sleepy little Vershinino, what greets them is both different and not: a few dozen wooden houses nestled in two neat rows between the foot of a gentle knoll and the banks of Lake Kenozero. The houses are quaint: ornate patterns in cheery colors are hand painted on the window frames and vergeboards. Everything is built from logs — which the intervening years have weathered to a bleached grey. Nothing bears the slightest trace of mechanical precision or mass production.

 

 _There's nothing for you in the great white North. There's nothing for any of us up here. Forest and churches_ , he thinks. They roll along the winding set of tires ruts that serve as the main road. It's slow going — the early afternoon sun has begun to melt the road’s uppermost layer of ice, making it soupy and treacherous for the Lada’s balding tires.

 

Smoke rises from a few of the houses, but despite the fair weather — there are no children playing outside, no families working or taking a walk, no farm animals wandering —

 

Nothing, nothing, nothing. _Perhaps it is simply because of winter,_ lies Kyril to himself. His gaze flicks apprehensively over to Rey, then away again. She is frowning, brow furrowed; he imagines she is trying to understand what she is seeing.

 

_I tried to tell you, Irenushka._

 

But Kyril knows he should have tried harder — a thrown away comment _hardly_ counts as trying. He should not have even _brought_ her here.

 

He's heard stories about the villages in the north, passed offhandedly among prisoners — how the failing economy of the nineteen eighties left these places destitute, without recourse. How there is no work to be had up here except on the railways and in the forests, how the collapse of the Soviet Union has left them bereft of the state support necessary to run their collective farmsteads, how the inhabitants of these charming little villages once prized for their industry and heartiness have been forced to migrate en masse to the cities—

 

He supposes, as they reach the far end of the village — a five minute drive, all-together — that it was naive of him to hope that Vershinino would be different.

 

 _You are a fool_ , he thinks.

 

But it _does_ strike Kyril as odd that the houses here seem so well maintained compared to those of the neighboring villages. They all bear bright, fresh paint; their unbroken windows are all shuttered or curtained; their roofs are intact under their cloaks of snow. Every home presents a hand-painted door to the road. There is undoubtedly _someone_ keeping this village alive.

 

“What now?” Rey asks, when he pulls over alongside the road and parks the Lada. Her voice is strained, small — when he looks at her, her lips are pressed into a thin pale line.

 

“We'll leave the car. There's smoke coming from some of the chimneys—we'll knock on those doors. Find someone to speak with,” he says, in as calm a tone as he can manage.

 

Rey _must_ know that something is not right here — she would have to be blind not to see it. But Kyril has to wonder the extent of her misgivings, if she really comprehends the realities of the country she has come to. He thinks he wouldn't blame her if she didn't — he's not even sure if _he_ understands, completely, what has become of Russia.

 

He find there are no words to express his regret for bringing her here, to this forgotten wasteland. So he chooses wordlessness, hoping she will understand him in the way she seems to — with her own preternatural intuition.

 

They trundle through the snow, hearing only the sounds of their breathing, a distant raven's jeering call, a dog somewhere barking relentlessly. When they reach the first house from whose chimney emanates smoke; Kyril hunches his shoulders, then knocks on the yellow painted door.

 

It is only _after_ he has knocked that he notices the sign posted beside the door — written in Russian. His sense of doom becomes more than a sense; it becomes a foregone conclusion.

 

Because in Cyrillic script, the sign reads: Kenozersky National Park Headquarters.

 

Just as Kyril is turning to Rey, mentally scrambling to find some explanation, the door opens. A heavyset middle-aged man, dressed in a thick wool sweater and mud-encrusted corduroys, stands at the threshold.

 

“Yes? Are you here for a permit?” he asks in a strong Siberian accent, his tone brusque.

 

“No, we're—looking for villagers. People who lived here in the nineteen sixties and seventies,” Kyril says. Over the man's shoulder, he glimpses the interior of the house: it's one centralized room, filled with shelves and shelves of paperwork, a few desks, and an organized supply of winter survival gear. There's no sign of domestic life within.

 

The man laughs, a gruff bark. “None of those left, really. Everyone who lives here in the winter works for the park. The ones who were born here or remember that far back—they've all gone to live with their children in Plesetsk or Arkhangelsk.”

 

Kyril peeks at Rey from the corner of his eyes — she can't understand the man's words, but she's _also_ looking over his shoulder, also observing that this house is clearly not a home but an office. She doesn't look happy. _Fuck_.

 

“Kyril,” she says, “what is this?”

 

The man grins, stretching his bristly grey mustache upwards and revealing a mouthful of blackened teeth.

 

“An American, huh? _Nice_.”

 

“Do you know where we could find them? In those cities?” Kyril inquires, momentarily ignoring the way the man leers at Rey's pretty face.

 

_I'd kill you for that, if I weren't so desperate for your help._

 

The man shrugs his thick shoulders. “Couldn't tell you. They might have records of them up in Arkhangelsk, but—I doubt it.”

 

“Kyril,” says Rey, more insistently.

 

His desperation is simmering up into a low, angry boil; he takes a deep breath, steadfastly refusing to look at Rey — who is tugging on his jacket sleeve, who is _also_ becoming agitated. His fists are clenched, his jaw _aches_ from how tightly he's been grinding his teeth all morning.

 

“There's _got_ to be someone,” Kyril demands, sounding frayed and panicky, even to his own ears. “Come on, think. She’s—” he jerks his chin towards Rey, “—from here. Her mother emigrated to America, when she was a kid and she just wants to find her family. So—”

 

He leans down to meet the man's eyes, then growls, “So how about you take a minute and search, really _search_ , that stupid _fucking_ brain of yours? Then tell me something that will make _her_ happy, hm?”

 

With that, he swings his arm up and around Rey. She yelps in alarm when he pulls her body close to his, but the maneuver serves its purpose — his hand resting over her collarbone puts his tattooed knuckles on display.

 

“Oh,” the man sputters, his rubicund, pockmarked cheeks blanching. “I—let me just—there’s, there's got to be, uh—”

 

Under her breath, against his chest, Rey mutters, “What the _fuck_ , Kyril.”

 

“The hieromonk!”

 

Kyril arches an eyebrow, narrows his eyes, and waits for the now frightened-looking man to elaborate.

 

“The—the old widower, Father Hieromonk Zosima. He was born in a nearby village, but he moved here to marry a local girl, uh, in the fifties, I think. He’s—he lives up on the hill, in a little hovel behind the Chapel of Saint Nicholas.”

 

The man points a shaking finger in the direction of the sloping knoll behind the village. Atop it sits the chapel, a silvery wooden church wreathed in shimmering ivory snow. Its pear-shaped spire, oxidized from the copper used to treat it, glows an otherworldly, iridescent green. Rising up behind it is an octagonal bell-tower.

 

_Forests and churches._

 

“Well now,” murmurs Kyril, “that wasn't so fucking difficult—was it?”

 

. . .

 

They find the spindly old monk inside the chapel. He is lovingly dusting the shabby gilded paintings which hang from the floor-to-ceiling iconostasis, a simple wooden gate that separates the altar from the nave. The monk frowns at Rey's uncovered head, and then again at Kyril's tattooed hands, but when he hears that they're looking for information about the village, his wrinkled face lights up.

 

“They made this whole area a national park back in ninety-one,” he says, stroking his flocculant white beard.

 

“I was lucky to survive the purges of Khrushchev and Andropov. We were mostly overlooked, all the way out here but—there were spies of the state everywhere. You couldn't be too careful. Often we were forced to worship in secret, hidden in the homes of those who still carried the word of God in their hearts.”

 

“What's he saying?” Rey whispers, breathing fine white mist into the chill air.

 

“He's been here a long time,” says Kyril, under his breath.

 

The hieromonk spares a quizzical glance for Rey, then continues. “This area was prosperous, once. Despite the harsh climate, we thrived. But things fall apart, don't they? So it was for us. My wife has gone to God, my children to the cities—now I have only this church, which we just barely managed to protect from the rabid state.”

 

“What’d he say?” Rey fidgets, shuffling her feet and gawking at the simple nave — it is without pews, in the orthodox tradition. The flat wooden ceiling rises to a humble octogonal dome above the altar, and each panel of the dome is illustrated with a red-robed, haloed saint upon a turquoise background. It adds a little cheer to the otherwise austere, frigid interior.

 

“He's just rambling,” Kyril tells her, with a courteous nod to the monk.

 

“Father Zosima—” he starts, but the hieromonk continues without heeding his interruption.

 

“Life was hard here, but we survived. There were times, even, when we were happy. Ah, perhaps it was better before. We were not free, but then—are we now? Now the taiga is reclaiming all our churches, the cities stealing our parishioners. Most of these homes are used as a _museum_! Can you imagine? Come one and all, to see how the northern peasants and proletariat once lived.”

 

“Was that something about a museum?” Rey asks, but the monk is still going—

 

“Now that there is freedom, there is choice. But no one has chosen Vershinino, I'm afraid. Now all we have is park keepers and tourists,” he laments. His cloudy blue eyes settle on Rey. “Not many American tourists, though.”

 

“She's from here,” Kyril explains. “On her birth certificate, it states she was born in this village.”

 

“Is that so?” asks the hieromonk, with a surprised huff. “What is your name, my child? When were you born? Where were you raised?”

 

“Kyril, what's he asking me?”

 

Zosima’s face twists into a discontented moue. “She doesn't speak _any_ Russian?”

 

Kyril resists the very strong temptation to roll his eyes at the doddering old man. Turning to Rey, he mutters, “Show him your birth certificate.”

 

Rey gingerly pulls the folded document from her jacket pocket, removes the plastic file protector, then offers it to Zosima.

 

He squints at it for a long, long time, then his eyes flick up to study Kyril. Finally, they return to Rey.

 

“Irena Imyarek,” he says, tilting his head. “And no patronym.”

 

 _Fuck_ , thinks Kyril. He plucks the certificate from Zosima's hand, scanning the contents for himself. It's the first time he's actually read the thing. _Fuck_.

 

“You know what this means, my son,” Zosima says, with a heavy sigh. “What can I tell her? Whoever her mother was, she didn't want an official record of the girl's birth, if this is the name she gave.”

 

“Your mother's name was Desdemona?” he asks Rey. Zosima is right. It's not a normal Russian name, and Imyarek — it's just a placeholder. She shrugs, gives an anxious little nod. Kyril takes a breath. “When she came to the US, what surname did she use for your documents?”

 

“Smith,” she whispers.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

“Kyril?”

 

“You don't remember _anyone_ passing through here in nineteen seventy-one?” Kyril presses, handing her the certificate and turning back to Zosima.

 

 _God_ , he silently prays, letting his eyes drift over the severe painted faces of the saints. _Don't make me hurt her twice like this in one day._

 

“There were transients, from time to time. I kept no records, and I have no memory of a Desdemona. Whoever she was—she lied. Either to us, or to the state. Perhaps both,” the hieromonk sniffs.

 

“What about that year, nineteen seventy-one? You can't remember a woman arriving in town to give birth, then leaving?” Kyril's left eye has begun to twitch, the muscles beneath it contracting so rapidly it edges on painful.

 

Zosima shrugs, clearly frustrated with Kyril as well. “I do not.”

 

“Hieromonk Father Zosima,” Kyril says, “do you speak English?”

 

“No, my son, I most _certainly_ do not,” Zosima declares, as though offended by the suggestion.

 

_Then you're of absolutely no use to me._

 

“Thank you—for your help. I'd better—I should tell her, about this,” he says. Zosima nods, darts one more perplexed, inquisitive look at Rey, then turns back to his icons.

 

“Irenushka,” he starts — meek, hushed, cautious. He pulls her hands into his own, and thanks all the gods when she permits this. Her fingers are white-blue with cold, and he brings them to his mouth to breathe on them, letting his eyes slip shut.

 

_I can't do this to you._

 

“Just tell me,” she mumbles. “I know it isn't good, I can understand _that_ much, at least.”

 

“He doesn't—” Kyril opens his mouth, bracing himself to tell the truth, to wound her with this complete dead end, but before he can summon the words — she does it for him.

 

“He doesn't remember her, does he?” she asks, nodding towards Father Zosima. “There’s—there's no one around in this village. Or any of the others we passed. There's no one who knows her. Luke told me—Imyarek, it's like calling yourself John Doe. I'll _never_ know anything about her, will I?”

 

“There might be others, Irenushka. He's just an old man, we don't know how good his mem—” he tries — but it's no use, she barrels right over him.

 

“Музей. The—that’s the word the monk used. Is that museum, Kyril? _What_ is a museum, exactly?” Her tone has grown shrill, and it bounces around the frigid, sepulchral nave.

 

Kyril swallows. “This—this village is. It's—the headquarters for a national park, and—a museum.”

 

“Then—there's—there’s nothing _for_ me here,” she breathes — congested, faltering.

 

Kyril has a front row seat to the moment Rey decides she has had enough of this. A shadow passes over her face, like a mask slipping into place, and she tears her hands from his. She shakes her head, features hardening to stone and shoulders squared, then pivots on her heel and all but _runs_ for the entrance.

 

“Rey!” he calls, but she's already halfway out the door.

 

. . .

 

He catches up to her a few paces away from the front steps of the chapel, and reaches once again for her hands.

 

“Don't,” Rey snarls. He pulls back as though bitten, and watches — eyes burning, barely able to breathe — as she marches down, down, down between the houses, down to the shoreline of Lake Kenozero. Kyril follows at a distance. She treads out onto it — a sweeping field of ice, its distant edges bordered by forest, so deeply carpeted by snow it's impossible to say where the water ends and land begins.

 

As he trails her, he cannot see her face. Only the tense set of her shoulders within her bomber jacket. Only the jerky, robotic way she stomps through the snow. Only her elbows thrown out sharply from her slender frame, her hands shoved deep in her pockets. Only her downturned head.

 

Behind them is Vershinino, or what has become of it. Before them there is only frozen lake, and deep snow, and tranquil forest, and an oppressively azure sky bearing down overhead.

 

Rey comes to a halt, seemingly at random, so Kyril freezes as well. And then—

 

She screams, bending at the knees — as if she must pull the ghastly, furious sound she's emitting up from the soles of her feet. Its blood-curdling pitch sends a nearby unkindess of ravens flying. Across the lake a deer emerges from the treeline, staring at Rey with alarmed curiosity. The hiemal serenity of the world is shattered by her piercing cry.

 

When she stops for want of air, Kyril drags in a shuddering, relieved breath in tandem with her. The echoes of her scream ring out across the clear afternoon — or maybe they are only in his ears.

 

Rey gasps, panting heavily, sinking to her knees in the snow, curling her body in on itself — a one-woman huddle once more — and what he wants more than anything in the entire _world_ is to sweep her up in his arms and take her away from all of this—

 

But he realizes, in this gut wrenching moment, that he has no clue if that is what _she_ wants.

 

The next scream is not so much a voluntary expression as it is a high, thin wail being torn from her chest — a prelude to tears.

 

Kyril flinches, but stays rooted where he is.

 

. . .

 

There is a feeling, deep in the pit of your stomach, when the tides of fate turn against you. It starts with a sharp wrench, like someone has twirled your intestines around their closed fist and _yanked_ , hard. It doesn't end, though — that wrenching, it keeps going. Sometimes it is an undercurrent: a churning, roiling sensation, like the lingering effects of eating a slightly over ripened piece of fruit. Sometimes it's worse: a sharp stabbing pain — anguish, too much for the mind to bear, made physical so the body may share the burden.

 

Rey is still in the wrenching, yanking stage.

 

She cries, but not from something so simple as mere sadness. She's beyond that. Hers are the furious tears of someone who cannot express in words the bottomless depth of their disappointment, the bitter clenching of their heart.

 

A museum? A fucking museum. All this way, everything she has done to get here — and her birthplace has been made into an exhibition of a bygone Russia, one that may not even exist at all one day.

 

 _Is Desdemona even my mother's real name? Did she want me? Did she love me? What happened, to make her run away?_ she thinks, hysterically. _Did my father know me? Did he ever even see me? Is he still alive, did he ever look for me, what if he's in New York at this very moment—_

 

“Rey.”

 

 _And you,_ she fumes silently, shooting Kyril a dark look. _You had a father, and you killed him. Your mother is still alive. You have chosen this pain, it didn't choose you._

_You're not like me, after all._

 

He thumbs towards the Lada, still parked where they left it at the northernmost edge of the village. Rey can just make it out, sitting alongside the road, its hideous chartreuse paint sparkling in the high afternoon sun. She nods, but cannot look at him.

 

The walk back to the car is done, as most of the morning’s actions have been, in silence. Rey plods along listlessly on legs that have long since gone numb, Kyril following behind. He doesn't attempt to comfort her with pretty lies or soft kisses, and for that — she is unsure if she is grateful or resentful.

 

 _Grateful_ , she decides. _I never want to be touched again. I want to be as hard and strong as that lake—and just as frozen._

 

And yet when — lower lip trembling, pulling in a shaky breath — he extends his hand to her, after they have piled into the Lada and sit there in flinty, brittle silence — she takes it.

 

“Milaya,” he breathes, and it all goes to shit.

 

She's crying again, ugly crying this time — there's snot everywhere, god-awful noises clawing their way out of her throat, her whole body shaking —

 

“Come,” he commands, tugging her towards him. He adjusts his seat until it's leaning far enough back that she can curl up between his barrel chest and the steering wheel. “Come here, now, milaya.”

 

She does, crawling into his lap — and she's torn, she's tearing herself apart with all these things she's thinking, all these thoughts that are eating away at her, but by _God_ she needs this, needs his arms around her.

 

He gives her what she needs, pulling her close. Enshrouded in his embrace, she sobs out the last remnants of her useless dreams.

 

 _You're a fool,_ she thinks.

 

His chest rises and falls unevenly, erratic. When Rey looks up from the crook of his neck where she has been hiding her face — his eyes are bloodshot, his lips pursed, jaw working as he chews the inside of his cheek.

 

She places her hands on his chest. The feel of hard muscle beneath them, buffeted by layers of clothing — it's _something_. There's a flicker of something, still there between them. This much, she can't deny. Rey adjusts herself so that she is straddling Kyril, her legs folded beside each of his thighs. Sliding her hands up to his neck, she grabs onto his throat — pressing lightly on his Adam's apple with her thumbs.

 

If she were to press any harder, she would be restricting his airflow, depriving him of oxygen. She does not press any harder.

 

Kyril's pupils are dilated. She can feel him through his trousers and her jeans, growing hard. His mouth hangs open, gasping in sharp, hitched breaths.

 

 _He likes this_ , she thinks. _I might like this, too._

 

When Kyril did this to her, it felt loving and possessive. And there is something about those motives that Rey understands. Now that she knows, without any more doubts to cling to, that she comes from nowhere, from no one — Rey _burns_ with the urge to possess something. Her fingers twitch with it, her cunt throbs from it. She wants to _own_ this man, wants him to accept all of her avaricious, grasping _need_ and let her devour him whole.

 

_But you can't, remember? Someone got there before you._

 

“Why? _Why_ did you kill your father?” she asks.

 

Perhaps he is at a loss for words, perhaps he has no answer. Either way, he doesn't reply — just stares back at her with those aged amber eyes—

 

“Didn't you _love_ him? Didn't he love _you_?” she asks, and she hates — _hates_ — how her voice cracks.

 

“Yes,” he gasps.

 

“Why didn't _I_ get to have a mother and father? I _never_ would have hurt them. I would have been a _good_ daughter,” she bleats. “If someone had just fucking _loved_ me I would have been good—”

 

Oh, the tears again. She cannot stop them, has no strength left to try.

 

“So good, I would have been good.” She is just babbling now, releasing his throat, burying her face in her hands—

 

“Yes,” he sighs. “Yes. Everything I had—it should have been yours. You would have done more with it. You would've been better than me—you _are_ better than me.”

 

And that doesn't help her, that only worsens the intense throbbing ache, the tears that are wracking her frame — she just wanted to find _something_ , anything, some semblance of an answer to the blinking neon question marks in her life, was that so much to ask?

 

 _You did find your answers,_ whispers a dark voice in her heart. _You are the daughter of no one, inheritor of nothing. Your legacy is preserved ruins, held together by the government so that tourists can gawk at Russia's vestigial limb, its forsaken pastimes._

 

His hands are pressed against her back, firm, imprinting themselves into her skin and her soul even through the leather of her bomber jacket. They paint wide swathes of warmth up and down her spine, across her shoulder blades, over the muscle of her bottom. When Rey looks up at him, she is greeted by the sight of his face, crumpled and forlorn, tears spilling over and down his cheeks—

 

“I'm sorry,” she croaks.

 

“You don't have to—I understand,” he murmurs. “I hurt you.”

 

“The world hurts me—it keeps _hurting_ me all the time, Kyril,” she says.

 

“And I am part of that world. The things I've done, the things I haven't done—I just can't seem to stop hurting you, too.”

 

He looks as wrecked as she feels. More, maybe. Rey marvels at this — that he can empathize so keenly with this torment she's suffering.

 

“It's the last thing I would ever want to do,” he continues. “I don't know how to make it better.”

 

Rey sighs. _Oh, you're no good for me. The things you make me want—this is not good, there is nowhere good for this to go._

 

“Just hold me,” she tells him, pitching forward to press her face against his neck, breathe him in and try to forget—

 

_But I need this. I need you._

 

. . .

 

In the soulless, undecorated bedroom room of a sleazy hostel on the outskirts of Plesetsk, Rey and Kyril lay spooning in a narrow single bed. The only illumination is that from the moon, which streams in through the crooked plastic blinds.

 

They aren't speaking. They didn't speak for any of the three hour drive from Vershinino, and they don't speak now. What is there to say? Rey is drained, her exhaustion is all-encompassing; there is no space left in her body for words. There are no shared stories, no comforting promises, no tentative sexual overtures, no attempts to connect—

 

They do not speak of the future. Not even tomorrow.

 

This is animal comfort — the feeling of a warm body holding you down to remind you that no matter the agony, you are still _here_.

 

Kyril's arm around her waist is heavy and still. His legs are thick roots — entangled with hers, keeping them planted. His head lays on the pillow behind her, close enough that each exhale sends a puff of air across the nape of her neck.

 

He has been humming soft Russian lullabies, the words barely discernible — just a low rumble in her ear. His singing is lovely — a rich warm baritone that seeps into her pores, through the cracks in her soul that the day has reopened. It _is_ something.

 

“I'm so tired,” she gasps. There are no tears left now, only the hollow, bone-deep weariness that comes from crying yourself empty.

 

Rey knows it well.

 

“I know,” he says, after a moment's pause. He is gentle, his tone mild. He is trying to help her, in this small way. But Rey thinks there might not be any help for this pain — not from Kyril, or anyone else.

 

“Rey,” he says, propping himself up on one elbow. Gingerly, he reaches for her jaw, lifting her face up from the pillow and leaning over her until they are looking into each other's eyes.

 

“В лоб целовать—заботу стереть. В лоб целую.”

 

He presses a soft kiss against her forehead, his dark eyes shining in the waxen moonlight. Rey closes her own eyes against the emotions she sees there.

 

“В глаза целоват—бессонницу снять. В глаза целую.”

 

She hears him murmur this, and then, there is a soft pressure — his lips — against first her right eyelid, then her left.

 

“В губы целовать—водой напоить. В губы целую.”

 

She feels the rough pad of his thumb against her lower lip — another unspoken question. She gives a little nod, her eyes still closed. His lips on hers is not the electric shock of their first kiss, nor the unfettered inferno of the night before — it is a thing of grace, of tenderness, of compassion.

 

He clears his throat, then rumbles, “В лоб целовать—память стереть. В лоб целую.”

 

Another brush of his lips against her brow.

 

“Sleep, Irenushka,” he tells her, releasing her jaw. She settles back into his body.

 

And Rey doesn't think there can be any respite from her relentless thoughts — doesn't think she'll be able to sleep. But within minutes, her mind going blank, her body slack — she finds that she can sleep, after all. So she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes! First up, translations:
> 
> "милая девушка" _[milaya devushka]_  
>  **sweet girl**
> 
> "мудак" _[mudak]_  
>  **asshole**
> 
> So, the poem Kyril recites is ["В лоб целовать"](https://sites.google.com/site/poetryandtranslations/tsvetaeva/-to-kiss-the-forehead), by [Marina Tsvetaeva](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Tsvetaeva). (I got the English translation from [here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55422/a-kiss-on-the-forehead).)
> 
> "В лоб целовать — заботу стереть." _[V lob tselovat' —zabotu steret'.]_  
>  "В лоб целую." _[V lob tseluyu.]_  
>  **A kiss on the forehead—erases misery.**  
>  **I kiss your forehead.**
> 
> "В глаза целовать — бессонницу снять." _[V glaza tselovat' — bessonnitsu snyat'.]_  
>  "В глаза целую." _[V glaza tseluyu.]_  
>  **A kiss on the eyes—lifts sleeplessness.**  
>  **I kiss your eyes.**
> 
> "В губы целовать — водой напоить." _[V guby tselovat' — vodoy napoit'.]_  
>  "В губы целую." _[V guby tseluyu.]_  
>  **A kiss on the lips—is a drink of water.**  
>  **I kiss your lips.**
> 
> "В лоб целовать — память стереть." _[V lob tselovat' —pamyat' steret'.]_  
>  "В лоб целую." _[V lob tseluyu.]_  
>  **A kiss on the forehead—erases memory.**  
>  **I kiss your forehead.**  
>   
>  Name meanings!  
> [Desdemona](https://www.behindthename.com/name/desdemona) is the name of the murdered wife in Shakespeare's _Othello_ , and it comes from the Greek word "dysdaimon", which means "ill-fated."
> 
> I spent way longer than I'm ready to admit trying to decide what the monk's [name](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_name) should be, even going through this list of [Russian saints](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_saints_\(until_15th_century\)), before I finally just decided to name him after the elder monk Zosima from one of my favorite novels, [_The Brothers Karamazov_](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brothers_Karamazov).
> 
>  
> 
> Links!  
> What is a [cezve/how is Turkish coffee made](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_coffee)?
> 
> What is [grechnevaya kasha](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasha)?
> 
> What's a [disposable camera](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_camera)? (lol)
> 
> So, Siberian villages in the 80's/90's. Not a good time. [Here](https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2014/05/pictures-russia-decaying-village-20145212242508695.html) are some photos, [here](http://www.archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/flatview?cuecard=111902) is a news story with some statistics about internal migration. I definitely took liberties with this phenomenon as it seems it was much more serious in [eastern Siberia](http://focus-migration.hwwi.de/Russian-Federation.6337.0.html?&L=1) but it does seem like [Plesetsky District](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plesetsky_District) experienced it as well.
> 
> Where is [Plesetsk](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plesetsk)?
> 
> More about [Lake Kenozero](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Kenozero), [Kenozersky National Park](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenozersky_National_Park), and [Vershinino](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vershinino,_Plesetsky_District,_Arkhangelsk_Oblast).
> 
> A lovely photo of [Saint Nicholas Chapel](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/arkhangelsk-oblast-village-vershinino-st-nicholas-chapel-kenozero-national-park-81312876.jpg), some photos of [Kenozersky Park](http://rusmania.com/north-western/arkhangelsk-region/photos-of-kenozero-national-park).
> 
> [Architecture](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_church_architecture) in Eastern Orthodox churches.
> 
> What's a [hieromonk](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieromonk) and how should you [address](http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/clergy_etiquette.aspx) them?
> 
> The Soviet Union had a very turbulent [relationship](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union) with religion.
> 
> Did I read an entire forum thread to figure out if post-Soviet Russia would have sleazy [motels](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/sleazy-motels-of-the-ussr.377056/)? (Yes. Yes I did.)
> 
> That's all from me! Thanks for reading :)


	7. места, где мы раздавлены

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the places where we are crushed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again, and again, and forever, to everyone who is reading this, who has left a comment or kudos or subscribed or reblogged or anything else. You guys are all самое лучшее! ❤
> 
> Some really cool stuff: fio-nnwhitehead has made an absolutely fantastic [aesthetic](http://fio-nnwhitehead.tumblr.com/post/174670929519/go-i-know-not-whither-and-fetch-i-know-not) for this story. And reys-island made an awesome [word art](https://reys-island.tumblr.com/post/174634768839/a-quick-sloppy-piece-of-conceptword-art-i-did) piece with some beautiful Cyrillic script! Thank you so much, you two!!
> 
> And thanks^∞ to [Kachenka](Https://luminousreylo.tumblr.com), who is the coal that makes this train roll. Not only does she beta these insanely long chapters, she also makes the aesthetics I use over on Tumblr!
> 
> Finally, a warning: Kyril has some pretty dark times at the end of this chapter, and if you are bothered by non-graphic **thoughts about violence** , I would probably skip past everything once he realizes his _hands are shaking_. Please feel free to come find me on Tumblr if you have any questions!

They don't make love the next morning.

 

That isn't to say, slowly stirring, entwined in the narrow cot of a bed, that they are cold, or distant.

 

But Kyril wakes with the woeful words of an old poem lingering upon his lips, and that same sense of foreboding still thrumming in his veins. And Rey is grieving. Her distress hurts him, and in turn — the pain that they now share imbues the late morning light with melancholy.

 

She doesn't push him away when he brushes his lips against hers. Nor does stop him when he follows her to the communal bathroom — in fact, she locks the door and pulls him into the shower with her. Describing the water pressure as weak or the temperature as tepid would be a kindness to both, but it's still _Rey's_ beautiful body under the lukewarm stream with him, she's still _allowing_ him to touch her, and he still relishes running his hands over her slippery smooth skin.

 

They don't make love. They don't fuck. They barely kiss — just a few fleeting grazes of their lips against each other's skin, almost as if they are afraid to indulge, are too busy committing to memory the feel of intimacy to initiate anything sexual.

 

But they _do_ touch. His hands flat against her spine, hers on his arms, Rey's feet inside of his — fine-boned, so small comparatively — her cheek resting on his pectoral, her eyes slipping shut as they sway together. Kyril thinks that maybe Rey had, in a life he knows very little about, gone without touch for long enough that she would not refuse him this privilege even if she _did_ blame him for everything that has happened.

 

He wonders about that — he's been mulling it over since they left Vershinino. And really, he should just ask her: _Am I to blame? And if so, can you forgive me? And if you can forgive me for the things I have done that incidentally hurt you, can you forgive the things I've done that had no effect on your life?_

 

Can she, who has never known her father, forgive him for killing his? Could she forgive him for the innocent lives he's taken, if he knelt before her and begged?

 

He doesn't ask her. For as long as he does not ask her, she does not have to answer. And this gauzy dream in which they've been living — it can endure.

 

“Coffee?” he asks, when they are dressed, because it is a thing they have shared before and it's logical to do so again, because it is a reason to draw this out just a little bit longer, because it buys him that much more _time_ —

 

“Okay,” she says, husky and raw.

 

_Let me swallow your pain, give it to me. Let me carry it for you and in exchange you can carry me out of the hell I have created for myself—_

 

They drive into the city center of Plesetsk in search of breakfast, and end up in a grubby, smoke-filled cafe by the train station.

 

When they walk through the door, every hardened, jaded pair of eyes is on them in an instant. The cafe has no windows and no seats, the handful of tables are elbow-high, intended to be leant upon by the entirely male clientele. From the dull murmur of their conversations, Kyril discerns that they are mostly engineers or laborers on the trains, caffeinating on their lunch break in preparation for the long afternoon ahead.

 

It's as if their sullen collective gaze is the final splash of cold water Kyril needs to wake him from the dream; suddenly, staring back at these grizzled men — he is reminded that _he_ is very much a wanted man.

 

With a hand at the small of Rey's back — he guides her to the bar, orders two instant coffees for them, and when the squirrelly old man has handed them to Kyril in plastic cups, they head towards a free table in a shadowy corner at the back of the place.

 

Kyril wordlessly herds her into standing with her back to the room so she cannot see how the men ogle her — and so he can keep an eye on the door. She pulls a face at the first sip of the watery brew, then dumps two whole packets of sugar into her cup to mask its bitter flavor. When Kyril huffs his amusement at this, she offers him a small grin.

 

_Maybe it will all work out. Maybe we can survive the fallout of yesterday. Maybe this isn't the end of us._

 

“Rey—” he starts, then pauses, his thought interrupted by something he spies at the cafe's entrance.

 

His insistence on standing with his back to the wall and his eyes to the ingress has proven to be a prudent choice. It affords him an extra ten seconds in which to grapple with his complete and utter shock, because standing just inside the threshold is—

 

Ivan Ivanovich Snoke.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

The grin Snoke sends him is nasty, lascivious, _victorious_. The message in those thin lips, those grey cheeks stretched wide, those eyes so pale they look translucent in the dim smoky cafe — Kyril hears it loud and clear. It says:

 

_Got you._

 

He watches in paralyzed horror as Snoke's eyes trail up Rey's long jean-clad legs, hover around her pert ass for a nauseating second, then continue up to the back of her bare head.

 

“Kyril? Is everything—are you okay?” she asks, eyes wide. He imagines that her expression mirrors his own.

 

In his mind, there is a tempest. His thoughts clash together like storm-tossed ships upon a sea, and so violently do they heave that he cannot bring a single one of them to his lips. _Say something, asshole, get her out of here, don't let Snoke anywhere near her—_

 

It's too late, though. He is doomed, _doomed_ , he was always doomed. Snoke is approaching their table, that smirk curling his lips and his pace unhurried, as if he is savoring the look on Kyril's face... and at this moment Kyril knows the truth of his life: he was born doomed, he will die doomed.

 

_All is lost. Lost, lost, lost._

 

“Well, imagine seeing you here,” says Snoke, as he sidles up beside Rey, leaning his splinter-sharp elbows — visible even through his thick wool coat — on the table beside hers. “I was worried _sick_ about you, Kyril Ren.”

 

Every caustic word from Snoke drips with insinuation. He leans his weight on one elbow and angles his tall, raw-boned body towards Rey, then gives her another once-over.

 

“And what have we _here_?” he asks, reaching up and running a bony finger the length of Rey's arm. She shudders, lips pressed tight, but never shifts her gaze from Kyril. Wisely, she says nothing, although Kyril can read the panic in the whites of her eyes, in the way her jugular pulses furiously. Rey is frightened, perhaps as a response to his own fear, perhaps because she knows who this is, and he should stay calm, keep a cool head for her, but he is frozen by his wild panic—

 

“Coffee,” says Kyril, playing the part of the fool.

 

“We've been waiting for you to turn up again, you know,” Snoke says, ignoring him. “Sitting around, back in Vologda. You left quite a mess, Ren. Very sloppy—first at the ryumochnaya, then the hotel, then leaving your _easily_ identified car to be _found_ by the owner of the car you _stole_. Sloppy, sloppy. He reported it to the local police, of course, one of whom happens to be an old friend of mine—”

 

He leans in, and if Kyril had to guess, he would say the Krestniy Otets is sniffing Rey. She looks as repulsed as he feels. God in Heaven, this isn't right.

 

_Maslenitsa, Vasilisa, moi volchonok, moi milaya devushka, what have I done, what have I done?_

 

“We were all so— _worried_ ,” breathes Snoke. His skeletal hand comes to rest on top of Rey's, and Kyril cannot find it in himself to blame her when she whimpers in muted protest.

 

He wants to whimper too. He wants to gather her in his arms and flee, but Snoke is not finished.

 

“Everyone, and I do mean _everyone_ , Ren, has been looking for that Lada you're driving. That includes the Tambovskaya. I put the word out, and offered a nice fat reward to anyone who found it. I never told you I'm from Arkhangelsk, did I? I have— _many_ —connections in this oblast. And wouldn't you know? Last night I received a very solicitous phone call from the owner of a hostel in Plesetsk, who told me that a hideously scarred man had checked in with some sweet young thing, driving the very same car—”

 

“Otets, I can explain—”

 

“Hush,” Snoke hisses. “I'm not finished speaking. I drove all night to get here, Ren. Do _not_ interrupt me.”

 

Rey looks like she is barely holding back tears. Her eyes dart between Kyril and the hand now trapped in Snoke's grasp.

 

“Now, my boy, four years is a long time. We all know that. And you did _well_ in prison, you served us well. I haven't forgotten. And—” Snoke takes a moment to lick his lips, his eyes honing in on Rey's sweater-covered chest. “This is a very _sweet_ little piece of ass you've found. She reminds me of a pretty girl I knew once, a lifetime ago. What's your name, girlie?”

 

“She's a whore,” Kyril blurts out, desperate to get Snoke's attention back on him. “I picked her up—in Vologda.”

 

One of Snoke's glabrous eyebrows lifts. “I'm not so hard a man as to refuse you human _comfort_ , Ren. I'm a kind man, a generous man—aren't I?”

 

“I—” Kyril needs to take this opening to explain, to spin some kind of story, but Snoke growls:

 

_“Aren't I?”_

 

“Yes,” says Kyril, chastened.

 

Snoke grins again, but it's really more a baring of teeth — a threat, a promise. He shrugs with unconvincing indifference, then continues, stroking Rey's fingers, “Granted, you had a fucking _month_ to get it out of your system before you had a job to do. But—because I am kind, and generous, I'm willing to overlook your— _error_ —in judgement.”

 

Kyril gives a tight little nod — he knows well enough not to speak. Not now, not until he's told. Those are the well-established rules between him and Snoke, and he's been a fool to forget them.

 

“I'm even willing to overlook the absolute mess you made in Vologda. And I'm going to help you out with the Tambovskaya, although you really _do_ need to leave the city when we're finished here. Do you know _why_ I'm going to help you, Ren?”

 

He shakes his head, dread pooling in his lungs, drowning him—

 

“Because,” says Snoke, with a wink in Rey's direction, “our arrangements are complete. In two weeks, we leave for New York.”

 

“We?” he asks, revolted by the fear on Rey's face, by the sight of her slim fingers wrapped up in Snoke's claw of a hand.

 

“Oh, yes. I've decided it's time I _personally_ check in on our brethren in Brighton Beach. _And_ I've decided—”

 

He's so smarmy, so smug and self-satisfied and never has Kyril ever wanted to _murder_ like he does right now but he won't move a muscle, not one, not while Rey is at the lecherous Godfather's mercy—

 

“I've decided,” Snoke proclaims, “that I want to be there. I want to see the look on your uncle Luke's face, when you brand him as a rat—and slit his throat.”

 

. . .

 

Rey feels like the aftermath of a forest fire.

 

Her limbs are blackened and crumbling, her leaves all burnt away. The ground on which she has built herself — her conception of Rey, as an entity, as a soul — is sere, and fallow.

 

But underneath that — there are roots. These roots are alive, they yearn to send up tiny green saplings. To begin again.

 

Rey was burned by yesterday's events, but then — Rey has been burned before. In her dreams last night she walked through a dessicated forest — not the cryptic snowy afternoon of her lifelong recurring dream, but a charred hellscape. She met herself in the dream — a burnt tree that spoke her innermost thoughts — and this tree, who was also Rey, told the real Rey not to abandon those saplings.

 

She woke feeling sad, terribly sad. And yet, there was some part of her that was oddly relieved. After all, the non-answers she's uncovered are still, in a sense, answers. And in that aureate morning light, hidden from the world by Kyril's strong arms, she'd thought to herself — _you haven't found nothing_. Kyril was not the answer she set out to seek, he is not an _easy_ answer, but he _is_ an answer nonetheless.

 

He stares at her now, face blank and eyes flickering with muted fear. This is not the same man she woke up with. It can't be, can it?

 

She looks down at the hand this odious man is holding. Her fingers ache from how tightly he's clasped them, the bones within grind together with each of his cruel squeezes.

 

Kyril stands across the table from her, and he might as well be on the other side of a canyon. He is cold, an aloof and brutish silence thrown up around him like the walls of a fortress.

 

 _You are supposed to be my kremlin,_ she thinks. _But I have been locked outside your gates. Are you in there, Ben?_

 

“Мы подготовили твои документы, и мои почти готовы,” sneers the hollow-cheeked old man.

 

She _knows_ who this is. She knows it from the deference in Kyril's posture, from the way his fists clench and unclench under the table, where he thinks the man can't see them, from his tight-lipped silence. Who else could inspire this deadening of the man she has come to know as fiercely passionate, this dumbness from a man who has spent the last several days showering her with beautiful words?

 

Snoke. The mentor. The crime lord. The dark voice that wallpapers the mind of man that she—

 

_Don't think it, Rey. Don't you dare let yourself think those words._

 

“Мы точно знаем, что Luke информатор?” Kyril asks, his deep voice flattened, and lifeless.

 

“У нас есть надёжный источник, но даже если бы его не было, ты же не собираешься ставить под сомнение моё слово?” the man asks. There is something in his throaty growl that makes Rey feel ill, something in his tone that is demanding, tyrannical. This is not a man who accepts no for an answer.

 

Kyril says nothing, staring back at Snoke like he has been hypnotized.

 

The old man, still squeezing her hand, continues. “Luke должен умереть, Кирилл. Ты знаешь, как это работает. Ты уже не школьник, вот и веди себя соответствующе.”

 

There it is again. She’d thought she had imagined it the first time, but now Rey is certain — they're discussing Luke.

 

“Мы встретимся с другими Ворами в Brighton Beach. Ты будешь моим личным охранником. Затем мы нанесём визит Luke,” says Snoke.

 

His face twists with that vile sneering grin again, and Rey has an errant recollection of a nature documentary she watched with Poe once — hungover and lazy on a Sunday morning, Finn out getting all three of them coffee and bagels and _God how she wishes she were there now—_

 

In the film, a crisp British man's voice narrated as a mother bird regurgitated food she'd eaten for her eager, chirping chicks.

 

 _You stole something from me_ , she wants to say. _You didn't know you were doing it, and I doubt you'd have cared if you did. But you took his future from him, and stole what should have been mine in the bargain._

 

Rey wants to make him _pay_.

 

She wishes she had the ability to vomit on command like those birds, so this asshole could understand one tenth of the revulsion she feels right now. Instead, she keeps her mouth shut and her eyes on Kyril.

 

She knows about predators. You never run, not from a predator. You never show them your strength, either, unless you know they're going to attack. Otherwise, they'll just see it as a challenge.

 

Kyril is nodding, infinitesimal twitches of his chin, as Snoke reels off what seems to Rey to be a list of instructions.

 

Now she is stuck waiting, unable to speak for fear of giving the game away. To cope, Rey slips into a daydream. In the daydream, the droning of Russian voices fades away, and Rey stands before Snoke in a cavernous, red-walled throne room. She's dressed in a warrior's garb, in the dream — high boots and sturdy earth-toned fabrics, her arms bound in twisting linen. She wields a sword made of raging red flames. Kyril's there too, outfitted in a medieval knight’s silver suit of armor — like those in the story they read together — and this man, this Snoke creature, clad in a flowing gold-threaded robe, he's snarling threats at her.

 

In her daydream, Kyril slays this man. In her daydream, they stand back to back and defeat the monster’s crimson-armored guard.

 

In her daydream, he offers a gloved hand to her along with one word: “ _Please_.”

 

Rey is pulled from the fantasy before her mind can concoct a satisfying conclusion, because Snoke's other hand has slipped into the back pocket of her jeans.

 

This dirty old man is grabbing her _ass_.

 

Rey looks to Kyril, narrowing her eyes and tilting her head meaningfully. But he just gives a slight shake of his head, his expression laced with warning, then goes back to nodding his understanding at Snoke.

 

_You're not going to stop this? You'd let him touch me like this?_

 

She hopes Kyril can see her discomfort. His jaw is ticking, the muscle under his eye too — she thinks he might just be as angry as she is, but it's so hard to tell right now. She wishes this man would let go of her hand, yearns to be at home on her beat-up couch with Poe and Finn, watching an old movie in their pajamas—

 

“Она не—” Kyril starts, then coughs, looking cowed when Snoke glowers at him.

 

“Что, Ren?” he asks, deadly calm.

 

“Она _моя_ ,” Kyril says, pressing his lips together. “Я уже заплатил ей за неделю.”

 

“Как экстравагантно. Ты не хочешь делиться? Что, её киска выложена опиумом?” asks Snoke, his tone taunting. He laughs at something, perhaps his own joke.

 

This was a jibe at Kyril's expense, judging by the quickly stifled fury that flits across his face. Nevertheless, the hand is removed from her back pocket and a second later — with one more seemingly cutting remark, and a condescending bow towards Rey — the man who is almost _certainly_ Snoke pivots on his heel, and struts out of the cafe.

 

There are a lot of things for Rey to be angry about this morning, a lot of things she needs to interrogate Kyril about. But right now, there's only one thing that really matters.

 

“Kyril,” she seethes, “Why the _fuck_ was that creep talking about Luke?”

 

. . .

 

_I am going to lose you, and I never even got to really have you._

 

“Let's go somewhere quiet,” he says.

 

“D—don’t—don’t do that,” she sputters, visibly irate. “Answer me.”

 

_But oh how I wanted to._

 

“Haven't I told you everything you wanted to know so far, Rey?” he asks. “I'll explain. But not here.”

 

Kyril scans the cafe. Now that he is free from the stupefying presence of Snoke, he can feel all of the suspicious eyes on them, can practically see every set of ears in this joint straining to listen in. It was rash of Snoke to speak in public about their plans like that — but then, maybe he has moved beyond the common criminal’s fear of the law.

 

When was the last time Ivan Ivanovich Snoke did any sort of penance for his various crimes? Kyril can't be sure that he _ever_ has. One of the rumors about the man's origins is that he was born in the gulags, under Stalin's leadership, and escaped when he was a teen. Perhaps Snoke considers his punishment as having been preemptively carried out, perhaps he thinks now he must spend his life earning his punitive childhood.

 

“Why not here? That guy— _he_ did!” She's frowning at him, so serious and intent and Kyril longs for five minutes ago, when she was smiling hesitantly over her cup of bitter coffee.

 

“He is—above the law,” he murmurs. “And there are people looking for us. For me.”

 

“That _was_ Snoke, wasn't it?” she asks. “That’s the man who's gonna save Russia, Kyril? The guy who grabbed my ass and almost broke my fingers?”

 

Kyril swallows. “He was doing it to hurt me.”

 

“Really? 'Cause it felt like it was hurting _me_.”

 

“Rey,” he begs. “A drive. Somewhere quiet.”

 

“I don't—”

 

“I won't hurt you, I won't do anything to you. You have to know that by now. You can—please, Rey. Please, just—please trust me. We'll talk, and after we'll do whatever you want.”

 

_If the Tambovskaya find us in this crowded little cafe it will be a bloodbath, and I have already forced you to kill too much for me._

 

“Kyril, I don't want to go somewhere else. I want to know what's going _on_ —” she is saying, her brows drawn together and voice wavering—

 

“Rey. Irenushka. It isn't wise for us to tempt fate twice with the Tambovskaya gang. We got lucky last time, but now—we need to get out of Plesetsk. They know we're here.”

 

She goes still, solemn, breathing with studied effort. A long tense moment, filled only by the buzz of humdrum Russian conversations, draws itself out between them.

 

“F—fine,” she consents.

 

 _Not just your body,_ Kyril muses, as they retreat to the car and he drives them towards one of the roads leading out of town. _I wanted you to give me everything. I wanted your life, enmeshed with mine. Our souls, so familiar we could complete the other’s sentences. Your days passing alongside mine, in happy routine, idyllic repose._

 

“Pull over,” she instructs, in a desert dry voice, as they near a gas station.

 

“You need something, milaya?” he asks, and he thinks he sounds almost — frail. _Weak._

 

“Yeah, Kyril. I need answers.” She's staring at him now, worrying at her lower lip. What can he say to that?

 

_If I tell you the truth, I lose you. If lie to you, I lose you._

 

He pulls into the gas station, and parks the Lada as far from the pumps as he can. He hopes no one comes out to check on them.

 

Rey takes a deep breath, blows it out slowly through her nose. She looks down at her hands, where she is picking at a bit of frayed skin around her cuticle.

 

“What's going to happen to Luke?” she asks, a choked whisper.

 

“My uncle—” he starts, but then he has to stop, and take his own calming breath, and remind himself that he has not lied to this woman so far — that he will not begin now, even if the truth does take her from him.

 

“Will you take my hand, Rey?” he asks, endeavoring to buy himself time. Just one more feel of her hand in his, the flesh of her palm, the fine bones of her fingers, the soft skin beneath her wrist. Just once more. He extends his hand to her. “Please.”

 

Kyril suspects that she _knows_ , too. Rey knows that this will break them, that these are the last seconds that they have together before their grinding cosmic destiny tears them asunder and he thinks maybe he is pleading with his eyes, he is certainly trying to—

 

She takes his hand, lacing their fingers together, saying nothing.

 

_One of us was always going to have to bend. But we undoubtedly can not, will not, and so—we will both of us be broken._

 

He starts again.

 

“Luke Skywalker is an informant for the FBI. He's been living in Brighton Beach, spying on the New York branch of the Solntsevskaya Bratva. He thinks they are unaware of his duplicity. They are not.”

 

. . .

 

His hand is warm. And so big — his long fingers, laced through hers, cover most of the back of her hand. It makes her hand look almost childlike. She feels like a child, slowly coming to comprehend the absolute darkness of the world around her.

 

 _Luke never told me,_ she wants to say. _I didn't know._

 

She can't, though. She can't seem to make her throat work. Nor her tongue, nor her jaw. She doesn't think she needs to, anyway — she thinks Kyril can probably read the shock on her face.

 

“Informants,” continues Kyril, his eyes dark despite the clear morning light streaming into the car, “Well, you know what has to happen to informants. To Luke.”

 

“Do I?” she manages to gasp. “Do I know?”

 

“Rey,” he says, a hint of pleading, a hint of whining.

 

“Don't—dont _do_ this, Kyril,” she stammers. “Do _not_ make me choose between you and him.”

 

He slumps down in his seat, his hand still in hers. “What choice do you think I have?”

 

“There are choices. There are. What if—we run away? You could come back to the states with me. You could ask for amnesty, you could tell the FBI what _you_ —”

 

“You're not listening,” he interrupts. “The Solntsevskaya are no longer just in Moscow, they're not even just in Russia. They're in America, Rey, in New York, Atlanta, too. They're moving into cities all up and down the east coast. And if you think they're going to stop with the east coast—”

 

“You told me you'd _consider_ it!” she cries. “You said I made you want to undo the things you've done to yourself. This—Kyril, this isn't how you—”

 

“If it's not me, it will be someone else,” he says, calm and collected now. His voice is toneless. He looks down at their clasped hands. “And it has to be me. What happened in Vologda—I made a mess. I must make it right.”

 

“We'll call Luke and tell him to get out of the city. Get to—I don't know, Canada. Or the Midwest, somewhere remote. We'll meet him there. We can—we can hide. I don't care, Kyril, I'd give up my life for—”

 

“Don't,” he bites out. “Don't.” He's shaking his head, he looks as if he's about to cry. “It's not realistic, Irena. It's not—that's just not possible.”

 

And she can see that he means it — that his belief in the veracity of those words is tearing him apart, and it's too much, it's too much to fight him on this after everything that has happened in the last few days—

 

You never run from a predator. Rey know this, and anyway, Kyril isn't a predator, not to her. But a problem, this problem? Heartbreak? Rey has run away from that — plenty of times.

 

“I—I’ve changed my mind,” she whispers. “I want some breakfast. From the gas station.”

 

When he brings his gaze to hers, it is a fleeting moment of contact. But in that moment, Rey can feel that he is studying her, parsing through her words and her face and the unspoken language of her body. Whatever he finds there, he accepts.

 

“Okay,” he says, lips pursed. “It might just be chocolate.”

 

“Fine.”

 

There is an air of resignation in the way Kyril nods at this, almost to himself, before gently squeezing her hand and climbing out of the Lada. She wonders if he knows, even before he enters the small, understocked convenience store located behind the pumps, what she's planning to do.

 

Maybe he does.

 

Her eyes still on the doors, she gropes blindly around the backseat until her hand brushes against her canvas backpack. A second later it's in her lap, a second after that her arms are through the shoulder straps, the waist strap secured by its brass buckle under her ribs.

 

Then she is out of the car. She doesn't bother to close the door; she is already backing away — back, back, back towards the dense forest that lines the highway.

 

Five paces away from the trees, and he's still in the store, moving towards the counter.

 

Four — he's at the counter, a candy bar and a Coke in his hand.

 

Three — he's pulling his wallet out.

 

Two — he nods at something the man behind the counter has said.

 

One long backward step away from the trees, and Rey knows she needs to turn and run, but this might be the last time she ever sees this man who _could_ have been her everything and—

 

Kyril glances up at the man, who is speaking, then turns his head to look out the window.

 

Their eyes meet.

 

 _Run_ , command the broken pieces of her heart.

 

She obeys.

 

. . .

 

Running in snow is difficult.

 

She makes it maybe a hundred feet through the thicket of snow-tipped pines before he begins to gain on her. She hears him calling for her, deep voice panicked, bellowing her name. Closer, closer, closer still. Rey’s foot comes down wrong in the snow — slipping, her ankle rolls when it should have held fast, and then she is on her knees, breathless from exertion and throbbing pain.

 

“Rey,” he gasps behind her, equally winded. “You'd leave me like that? No goodbye, no nothing?” He comes around to face her, then tilts his head when he notices she is struggling to stand. “You're hurt.”

 

“I just rolled my ankle, it's fine,” she mutters, then continues, in a stronger voice, “I can't do this, Kyril—you're _breaking_ my heart. I can't _let_ you do this.” She glances up at him. He is anguished, she can see it. He reaches for her, but Rey flinches when he takes a step closer.

 

He frowns down at her. “Let me help you.”

 

Rey feels a hysterical, heartsore whimper work its way up from her gut. “You know,” she says, “before I met you, I thought _I_ was lost. I was the most lost person I knew. And alone, too—I thought I was all alone. But you know what? I'm not. Not like you are.”

 

“Rey—”

 

But now that's she's started, there's no corking this bottle, there's no unringing this bell.

 

“It was stupid of me to think I needed to know the name of some man I've never met, like that would make me a real person. I _am_ a real person. And I have people who love me. I have someone who _loves_ me—like a parent would.”

 

“He's a traitor,” Kyril seethes, ice cold with fury. Rey's not sure she recognizes this new Kyril. Maybe she caught a glimpse of him when they were fighting those men in Vologda, but it feels like — she only just met him _properly_ when Snoke walked into the cafe.

 

“It's not like—this,” she perseveres, refusing to acknowledge his comment. “You. Whatever we could have—well. I care about them, that's the point. I _love_ them. I love _him_! And you—you're telling me you're going to kill him. What did you think I was going to say? Neat, good luck? Travel safe?”

 

She stumbles to her feet, her hands flat on her thighs to steady herself. She tests her ankle, and it takes her weight. The snow has seeped through her jeans, making the muscles in her legs stiff. She's not sure she can run very fast now, if she can run at all.

 

“This,” he grits out. “I didn't _think_. I _knew_ this would be your response. But what do _you_ want _me_ to say? He's an informant, Rey, he's sold the Bratva out to the US government.”

 

Rage, red colored rage sweeps down over everything.

 

“Oh yeah?” she shouts. “Well maybe the Bratva _should_ be informed on. This isn't how Russia frees itself or whatever other bullshit that ogre has shoved down your throat! This glorious future you think you have—you don't, Kyril! Why can't you see that?”

 

“Maybe it won't be glorious. But it will be _mine_!” he roars, his entire body held stiff, angry. He clamps his mouth shut, jaw ticking, and looks down at his hands, collecting himself once more. Rey watches his emotions shifting, recalibrating, and then — his lower lip wobbles, just slightly. “Rey—”

 

She doesn't let him get any further. “He's my father, Kyril. More than some man I never met whose name I don't even know, who I won't ever know—he saved me, when I needed an adult. He took care of me, he helped me.”

 

Kyril takes a step closer, and she should give ground, keep space between them but it _kills_ her to see that look on his face. And still — this _needs_ to be said—

 

“It's his name on all my legal documents. And on every birthday card I've gotten since I turned sixteen,” she mumbles.

 

He takes another step, shaking his head.

 

“Kyril,” she gasps, the last weapon in her arsenal loaded and ready — because nothing else has persuaded him, “you are _not_ in prison anymore. There are no more walls caging you in. But you will _always_ be a prisoner if you stay with Snoke, and the Bratva. If you let them make you into—this—thing. A cold dead thing that kills on command.”

 

Kyril looks away, deep into the hushed forest.

 

“I know that you've suffered, Rey.” He sounds far away, ensnared in a memory. “I know he's important to you, but—I've _also_ suffered. And there was someone who was there for me, when I needed him—”

 

“That—creep—” she hisses.

 

“Gave me a purpose,” he cuts in, sanguine. “What about the things that I want, Rey? That—no one ever considers that, you know. What I want. But you told me—that I _deserve_ you. Did you mean it?”

 

Rey will not cry. She will not. Her heart is breaking, the dream they've shared is slipping away, but she will not cry.

 

“You don't need him to have a purpose. _I'll_ be your purpose. And we'll find you something—something new. You _are_ important to me Kyril, what you want does matter—and you—you deserve me. You do.” She heaves a broken sob, squints her eyes to fight back the tears. “But not like this.”

 

And he's standing so close now — so close, he could reach out and touch her. Grab her. Rey, she knows, in her heart she knows that Kyril would never hurt her, but—

 

She is shaken. She has killed two men this week, has lost any possibility of a past, seen a glimpse of a beautiful future only to have it torn away from her, has had life-changing sex and fallen in—

 

_Don't, Rey. Don't you dare—_

 

She has, though, hasn't she? Curse her godforsaken heart — she has come to _love_ this man.

 

But she cannot sit idly by while he destroys the only family she'll ever have, now. She cannot. That is a line that she won't ever allow him to cross.

 

So when he reaches for her, the jumbled up mess of her mind reacts on pure instinct. He grabs her left hand with his right; when she tries to pull free, he holds on tight. In response, her booted foot comes up between his legs, her kick delivered squarely to the groin. Kyril groans, sinking to his knees and hunched over, but he's still got a vice-like grip on her wrist. Rey's foot comes up again, toes pointed, and this kick sends the hard rubber sole of her boot deep into the bullet wound at his ribs.

 

That makes Kyril let go of her wrist, at last.

 

He looks up at her through his hair — crazed, groaning like an injured animal, cupping his groin and curling in on himself.

 

“Rey—” he heaves, looking pale, so pale, and a little green around the gills, and if Rey does not turn and hightail it out of here right this instant she may never have the strength to leave.

 

God, how she wants to stay.

 

But she cannot.

 

“I'm sorry, Ben,” she coughs out. With that, she spins, and hobbles off into the forest as fast as her frozen legs will take her.

 

. . .

 

Twenty feet up the road, Rey re-emerges from the trees onto the cracked, icy two lane highway. She stumbles alongside it for a while, without any clear plan. She's watching her Docs lift up out of the snow, then dig back in — propelling her forward. She remembers a dream where her tiny feet did the same thing, following a trail of garnet droplets. _What was I following then? Where was I going? Where am I going now?_ One step farther away from him, then another, then another...

 

When a car slows to a roll beside her, she is so lost in the whirlwind of her raging thoughts that she doesn't even notice — until the driver honks his horn.

 

Rey halts, then looks up from her feet.

 

A man behind the wheel of a rusty old sedan, in a thick leather coat. Beside him, a kind-looking young woman in a mink stole and black ushanka. In the backseat, a little boy swathed in layers of winter clothes, flying a toy rocket through the air.

 

“Куда вы идёте? Вам не следует одной ходить по дороге,” says the man through his rolled down window, frowning at her.

 

 _Russian_. God, why didn't she bother to learn at least a few key phrases before she got here?

 

“Um, Moscow?” she asks.

 

The man’s frown deepens, and he shakes his head.

 

“Vologda?” she tries.

 

The woman, most likely his wife, taps him on the arm, then whispers something in his ear. She leans over him to speak to Rey.

 

“Yes,” she says, offering a warm smile and beckoning with her gloved hand. “Vologda, девочка. Забирайся.”

 

Rey has to assume they mean her no harm, and anyway, what other choice does she have? She's standing on the side of a deserted country road in God-knows-where, Siberia.

 

“Thanks,” she murmurs, piling in next to the little boy, who offers up his rocket for her inspection.

 

She gives him a weak, trembling smile, and he beams at her in return.

 

. . .

 

Kyril thinks he could probably force himself to his feet and give chase, despite the howling pain in his groin that is making his stomach churn. He thinks he could call her name again, and maybe this time she'd stop not because she was injured, but because she would hear the misery gathering at the base of his throat, clogging it. He thinks maybe she only hurt him because she was frightened, and upset, and panicked.

 

But she still kicked him in the balls, and in his bullet wound, and even if his body were not injured by these blows, his soul _is_.

 

Kyril does not give chase. For a long, long time — long enough that a raven grows bold, landing on the bough of a nearby fir tree and chattering at him excitedly — he stays kneeling in the snow. He pulls in air, and releases it.

 

With each breath, his physical pain wanes and his heartbreak waxes.

 

And before him, in his mind's eye, he sees it: not the serene and wintry woods, but below — an angry, yawning rift opening up in the earth. Where once there was a snow-carpeted forest floor, now there is a fathomless crevasse, as if the tectonic plates of the world have parted, ready to swallow him. Deep below, the fiery red of the earth's mantle makes the forest glow like a smoldering ember. He imagines it: everything groans and heaves, shaking the fleecy white coats from all the trees. And on the other side of this rift, he can _just_ see the trail of footsteps Rey has left behind in the snow.

 

Kyril knows, he knows. All too well, he knows. Even if he could make himself stagger to his feet and follow Rey—

 

There is no crossing this gulf that has opened between them.

 

. . .

 

The family stops in a small village, and pulls Rey into their home. They feed her a rich beef soup — she wonders if this is Rassolnik, as it is meant to be prepared — and keep her cup of sweet black tea full to the lip.

 

They turn on the television for her, and in awkward silence they sit for an hour after they have eaten, watching music videos on MTv.

 

Rey wants to cry at their hospitality, their unhesitating welcome. They can't speak to her except in gestures, and she can only reply in kind. But she cannot relax into this cozy setting; there is a throbbing sense of urgency at the back of her mind.

 

Luke, she _must_ reach Luke.

 

“Phone?” she asks, pantomiming with her hand held up beside her cheek, pinky and thumb extended. She rifles through her bag, then pulls out her calling card. “No rubles. Card,” she says, wiggling it.

 

The woman, who has told Rey that her name is Kira, smiles and nods, then leads her to it, located in a cozy kitchen at the back of the house — it is attached to the wall, an antique phone with a heavy metal rotary dial. There she leaves Rey to her call with a little wave.

 

After she has jumped through all the long-distance calling hoops, she is met with the same endless ringing she got in Vologda. Her anxiety ticks up another notch. _Where is Luke?_

 

She returns to the parlor, defeated and despondent. Some time later, a very nice-looking, mild-mannered young man — twenty-five, she'd guess, maybe twenty-six — comes over and joins the music video viewing party. For a while, they sit and watch as video after video plays on the fuzzy screen — Nirvana, Salt-n-Pepa, Selena, Boyz II Men, on and on—

 

Rey is so _tired_. She is anxious for Luke, she is shattered from Kyril. She feels so much that she might as well be feeling nothing, for how incapable she is of distinguishing one tumbling emotion from the next. She has a hunch that this young man is meant to be some kind of blind date; in very stilted English, he introduces himself and asks her where she's from, if she likes Russia, if she is married. She can't reach Luke, she can't go back to Kyril, and she doesn't want to make any more decisions, doesn't want any more confrontations. So she smiles and nods, and answers his questions as politely as she can.

 

An hour on, after they have toasted and drank several rounds of vodka shots together with Kira and her husband, and Kira has wrapped up some dense, buttered dark bread for her — they bundle her up in a thick scarf and gloves, and pack her into his tiny Trabant. They chant 'Vologda’ in reassuring tones, nodding with enthusiasm — so Rey nods, mumbles out a shy cпасибо, and acquiesces to their machinations.

 

. . .

 

By the time he gets up and makes his way back to the Lada, evening — grave, dark save for the eldritch moonlight, full of heavy condemnation — has fallen.

 

With a dull, plodding tread he retraces his steps using the trail he and Rey left behind, until he reaches the gas station. The Lada sits undisturbed where he left it, despite his not locking the doors.

 

 _Lucky_ , he thinks, ironically. _Or as close as I will get to lucky on this day._

 

He folds himself into the driver's seat, turns the engine over and cranks the heat. Then he stares forward at the forest.

 

 _All is lost,_ he thinks.

 

There is something digging a tunnel through his skull — a question that has wormed itself into his amygdala:

 

If the Krestniy Otets is wise, and noble, and his vision for Russia is truly what Kyril believes in, ascribes to, is willing to cede his life for — why didn't he want him anywhere near Rey?

 

There is a very obvious answer, apparent to him everywhere he looks in the shivering night. It's written in sky above his head, when he looks up through the windshield at the glittering constellations. It's broadcast in his trembling hands. It's etched out between the hulking shadows of the forest.

 

 _You know why,_ they say.

 

_You know._

 

But — to admit that he knows, it would break him.

 

And Kyril, he's not ready.

 

. . .

 

As this shy young man drives her through the night — Russian pop music quietly playing on the radio, intermittently wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers — Rey thinks of Kenozersky Lake. She thinks of a raven's talons, razor-sharp and piercing. She thinks of the night that Plutt stabbed her, when she could just glimpse the chalk white of her femur down near her knee, before Phoebe held the wound shut in her strong, capable hands.

 

Her eyes burn. Sitting in the Trabant like this — it's so similar and so different from her and Kyril's first car ride. This man, he is no Kyril. _Would I be happy right now, if someone nice and safe like you had picked me up on the M8? Would I still feel this emptiness?_

 

The young man never once attempts to touch her. He is no Kyril.

 

His eyes don't lovingly trace the lines of her body. He is no Kyril.

 

He calls her Rey, without question. He uses no pet names. He is no Kyril.

 

She thinks: _I am ice and bone and claw. I will not cry for what was never mine. Not anymore, and never again._

 

It's a vow she doesn't know if she can keep. But she knows she has to try.

 

. . .

 

Kyril drives himself back to the Plesetsk train station. There is a two am night train to Moscow, so he buys a ticket for a berth in the first-class sleeper car, then sits down on a hard steel bench to wait. He tries very hard not to think about anything.

 

When that fails, when the dizzying maelstrom of thoughts will not be silenced, he speaks to himself to drown them out — uncaring of the curious eyes that gravitate towards him, the troubled faces of the people sitting nearby.

 

“I chose this,” he says. “I _chose_ this life. I had good reasons to, and I still do.”

 

A teenaged boy seated on a bench across from him frowns down at his book, trying to pretend he cannot hear Kyril.

 

“I could've been like you,” Kyril says to him. “ _Nothing_. I could have been part of their machine. But I chose _greatness_.”

 

A woman behind him clicks her tongue in annoyed disapproval.

 

“I am in hell, and I have crowned myself as Lucifer,” he announces, his voice rising with fervor.

 

A conductor walking by hisses at him to shut up, stop bothering these nice people. Kyril winces, then nods.

 

“I have made this hell with my own two hands,” he tells the man, under his breath. “Now I must live here, for the rest of my life.”

 

The man scowls at him, and walks away without offering a reply.

 

. . .

 

In the train station in Vologda, after the nice young man has timidly asked for her phone number and readily accepted her polite refusal, Rey stands at one of the automated ticket machines. It is very early in the morning, and there are no ticket windows open, or she would take her chances with a vendor. But the station seems to be bereft of employees, so here she is — trying to read the Cyrillic script that explains the automated ticket buying process. And _failing_ at that endeavor, with aplomb.

 

Rey bites her lip. _Ice and bone and claw. No crying, no more crying._

 

A young woman approaches Rey. She's wearing a sumptuous fur coat, the ushanka on her head far fluffier than Rey ever knew a hat could be. Her full lips are painted a glossy blood red, her sharp cheekbones cast dramatic shadows over face, and beneath her coat she's wearing a pair of thigh-high stiletto heeled boots.

 

“Тебе нужна помощь?” she asks, in a breathy, sultry voice. She offers — not a smile, per se, but a less severe frown than that worn by the other passengers loitering in the frigid, echoing station.

 

“I don't suppose you know English,” Rey mutters, darting a hopeful glance her way.

 

“Oh!” she cries, looking amazed. “American in Vologda. Huh. Why you here?”

 

“Just a tourist.”

 

“I know little English,” she says with audible pride, leaning in as though she's letting Rey in a scandalous secret, “I learn in night class. I am from Moscow city. And you?”

 

“New York,” mumbles Rey.

 

“Ah! New York. Glamorous. You rich, huh? You want travelling in the train? The first morning train, he comes in one hour. I can give you advices on the ticket for buying,” she rambles, warming to Rey now that they've swapped their life stories.

 

She begins to press buttons on the red and white machine, all the while still chattering away. “How you feeling yourself about Russia? You like her? Where you go, in Moscow? You want hotel? I know nice one, not too much rubles.”

 

“The airport,” sighs Rey. “It's time for me to go home.”

 

The woman pauses, eyes flicking over Rey's weary posture, her pallid face. She purses her lips, blinks at Rey in a way that seems to convey sympathy, then gives a resolved little nod.

 

“Don't you worry yourself, devochka, I get you home,” she says, a wide smile transforming her face from beautiful severity into something girlish, and warm.

 

. . .

 

Rey was not supposed to leave for another week, she realizes, when she finally shuffles into Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport many, many hours later. Looking at the date posted everywhere, she is shocked to see that only six days have passed since she was last here; it feels as though she's lived an entire tragic life in that timespan. The clocks on the departures board tell her it's just after four pm; outside, the sun has already abandoned Moscow, the parking lot swathed in inky darkness.

 

She steps up to the ticket desk, heaving a sigh of relief when the woman behind it greets her in perfect English.

 

The relief is short-lived; there are no tickets available on any US-bound flights for the rest of the evening, the woman informs her.

 

Rey groans, resting her head in the basket of her folded arms on the counter.

 

 _Ice and bone and claw. No tears, no tears_.

 

With a strained smile, she accepts a ticket on the earliest available flight to New York the next morning, using the last of Luke's traveler's checks to pay for it.

 

 _You did the right thing,_ she reminds herself. _You did what you had to do._ She tries Luke again on the airport's payphones, then Finn and Poe. Still no one answers.

 

She wonders around the check-in lobby, spends a while perusing the meals and drinks available from its sole food cart. She'd demolished the bread given to her by Kira almost the minute she sat down on the train, but she figures she might need something to get her through this night, so she buys a saran-wrapped sandwich, a Coke, and a chocolate bar that bears a painting of a swaddled baby on its wrapping.

 

 _Oh my God,_ she thinks, a memory suddenly striking her like an electric jolt. _You let him come in you._

 

_What if—_

 

_No. No. It can't be._

 

Rey takes several sharp, shallow breaths, trying to quell her panic. _The universe is not that cruel—you aren't pregnant._

 

 _But what if?_ demands an insidious little voice inside her.

 

 _I'll cross that bridge when I come to it,_ she replies.

 

She forces the thought from her mind, too weary to further entertain the possibility. And then, collapsing into one of the check-in area's uncomfortable bench seats, Rey has nothing left to do but wait.

 

She does not cry. Not from frustration, not from heartache, not from boredom. At some point in the middle of the night, borrowed scarf serving as a sleep mask to block out the glaring fluorescent light and her old jacket as a pillow, curled up tight in the fetal position on the bench, she feels something heavy and warm settle over her body.

 

Rey tenses, pulling the scarf from her face. A heavyset old woman, dressed in a long floral skirt, a sensible sweater, and a kerchief over her hair, is standing in front of her. A neon-hued winter parka has been draped over Rey's body, presumably belonging to the woman.

 

“Мой пальто, девочка,” she warbles, peering at Rey from over her thick glasses. In her hands she holds a mop, and a bucket. “У тебя зубы во сне стучали.”

 

Frustration, heartache, boredom: these forces she could have withstood. But this simple act of charity, on top of all the kindness and magnanimity she has already received on her travels back to Moscow — it cuts clean through her, as sharp as any bone or claw or ice.

 

Finally, Rey — under the auspices of a kindly cleaning woman in the middle of the night in Sheremetyevo International airport — is ready let go.

 

She is not bone, she is not ice, she is not claw. She is warm, fragile flesh and blood, and she is a walking wound.

 

The woman pats her shoulder, crooning soft words.

 

And Rey... 

 

Rey begins to sob.

 

. . .

 

In 1946, after the USSR had lost more than twenty million souls to help wrest the world back from Nazi Germany and its allies, Joseph Stalin had an idea. Stalin had many ideas back then; he was infamous for his brutal, unflinchingly violent need for control.

 

This _particular_ idea was born when Stalin looked around the city of Moscow and took deep offense at its skyline. According to Khrushchev, Stalin's idea was this: _“There are no skyscrapers. If they compare Moscow to capitalist cities, it's a moral blow to us.”_

 

In other words: if the capitalists had skyscrapers, then so too must the Soviets.

 

He set up a top-secret commission to cull drafts from a pool of the Soviet Union's prominent architects. Eight plans were chosen; seven skyscrapers were eventually built. The skyscrapers were given a name, collectively: the Seven Sisters. They served different purposes, had different designs from their different creators, and yet—

 

To this day, they all share that unflinching need of their progenitor — for dominance of the skyline, for respect, to be received as grandiose and magisterial and imposing.

 

Several of the Sisters are used for residential purposes. One of them, the Kudrinskaya Square Building, was built in the Presnensky District, facing Moscow's Sadovoye Koltso, the Garden Ring, a busy thoroughfare that encircles central Moscow. Finished in 1954, it was intended as housing for the party’s political elite.

 

Now, in the early winter of 1994, it is home to fashionable and wealthy Muscovites. There are twenty-two floors in the building. On the twenty-second lives Kyril Ren.

 

His apartment is a grand affair. It is the result of demolishing the walls between and combining three separate apartments. It features a modern, renovated kitchen and a luxurious bathroom. Thick velvet shades hang over the floor-to-ceiling windows, which offer a sweeping view of the city. Everything is gleaming marble and dark wood, rich deep colors on the walls, and heavy antique furniture that seems to pull the shadows out from the corners, plunging the opulent rooms into sinister, stygian gloom.

 

In an empty dining room under a chandelier's twinkling lights, Kyril sits languishing at the head of an immense mahogany table. He is dressed in only a pair of low-slung track pants, slouched down in the gilded, velvet-covered chair. One of his long legs is slung over its arm.

 

Kyril is trying to open a bottle of vodka.

 

He's trying, he really is, but the top won't come off. Does the screw top turn right or left? He can't remember. This is not the first bottle of vodka that Kyril has drank since he's returned to Moscow.

 

 _I had a bottle of vodka in the trunk of the Lada,_ he recalls. _I could have shared it with her, but I forgot about it._

 

Just one of the many things she made him forget, really.

 

_Weak._

 

He digs his nails into the textured sides of the bottle cap and twists with all his might — nothing happens.

 

_Her hand on his cock, barely able to close her delicate fingers all the way around it, twisting as she tugged up along the length of him, their bodies beaded with perspiration, her tongue sliding along the engorged, leaking head — Kyril pulsing in her wet mouth, strung wire-tight and aching to come all over her breasts—_

 

Kyril decides to switch tactics. There is a jar of pickles sitting before him on the table. He reaches for it, the chilled vodka bottle wedged under one armpit, and attempts to twist _that_ open.

 

It doesn't budge.

 

_Weak weak weak._

 

Carefully, Kyril tries to calculate how much he has had to drink this morning. It's eight am now, he's been awake since six pm last night — when he emerged from the vodka-induced stupor he spent most of yesterday inhabiting. He's gone through at least two bottles in the three days he's been back in Moscow.

 

 _When does it stop being late night drinking and become early morning drinking?_ he wonders, absently. _When was the last time I ate?_

 

"No more questions," he tells himself.

 

 _The feel of her thumb on his ear, as he cooked for her. How she laid her head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat. The moment after he'd placed her bare feet in the snow and she realized she liked it, her face lighting up like a yolka tree. When he placed the ushanka on her head and it dipped down over her eyes and she laughed, laughed out loud with surprised delight and he'd wanted, so very much_ wanted _—_

 

Kyril knows about wanting. Not that it matters.

 

Sure, sure. That's where the shoe pinches, isn't it? Spoiled rich boy. Pampered little Soviet prince, throwing a twenty year long tantrum because mama and papa got a divorce and sent him away—

 

_If not for the Solntsevskaya, you would have spent your whole life as a pathetic, sniveling milksop._

_You meet one pretty girl who bats her long eyelashes at you and you lose your fucking mind—_

 

 _Love_ , he thinks. _I know what love is. People have loved me, and I've loved people._

_I loved my father._

 

_I loved my mother._

_But by God, how I love Rey._

 

For ninety-six miraculous hours, Irena Imyarek was _his_ , and he _hers_ — she let him touch her and she shared her light with him and he felt something new, something strange and unsettling, all the resignation that had seeped into his organs lifting and everything rearranging itself within him to make room for this lightness of self, this feeling of being a man, a _normal_ man capable of tenderness and, and, and—

 

It burns, it burns — love, when it's twisted by rejection. How it acidifies into something corrosive; spurned love could strip the paint off a car, could eat the skin off his face.

 

Kyril surmises that it's better not to think about how much he has had to drink. At some point in the boozy blur of the last few days, counting shots became too depressing. It's easier to count bottles, anyway.

 

How many? Too many. Not enough.

 

And he can't get this fucking jar of pickles open, either.

 

With a frustrated huff, he slams the jar back down on the table and returns his attention to the bottle.

 

 _Oh_ , he observes as he takes the body in one hand and the neck in the other, _my hands are shaking._

 

Hers shook, too. In the cold, on the side of the highway. When he held one, and kissed her knuckle. When she killed two men for him, his perfect beautiful wolf girl—

 

And she was shaking, just a slight tremor, when he thrust into her cunt — so tight and how she tensed up, needy but nervous, how they worked together to open her up for him, his sweet woman, that cunt should belong to him, it should be _his_ , she told him he deserved it and he let himself believe her because _he_ wanted to be good, _too_ — he wanted to be loved and _cherished_ like she made him feel cherished and now he's going to kill Luke, he has to do it before Snoke gets to him—

 

_—can't get this fucking thing open—_

 

—because if he doesn't someone else will and it won't be a bullet in the brain, it won't be quick, it'll be the ears and then the fingers and then the toes, one by screaming one, and then a broken, bloody face and a neck slashed open and when they've chewed up him like a dog does with a bone Rey won't even recognize him anymore and—

 

_—who would make a bottle of vodka this prohibitively difficult to open, what purpose could that possibly serve—_

 

—she'll go to the police, she'll hate him forever, he will be well and truly damned and maybe the earth will have mercy, will open up beneath his feet, swallow him whole for _real_ this time—

 

_—JUST LET ME DRINK THE FUCKING VODKA—_

 

Kyril hears a loud vitric crash, loud enough that it breaks him out of the dangerous downward spiral his thoughts are taking. The air is thick with the pungent, noxious odors of liquor and sour salt. When he looks down at the table, he notices his hands — they are empty, and bleeding. He holds up the left; embedded deep in the fleshy heel of his palm is a large sliver of glass.

 

Like the lights on a stage slowly coming up — revealing the details of the scene before him — he begins to understand the smell and the glass and the pain in his hand. Strewn about on the table are shards of glittering wet glass. Splashed across the maroon wall at the other end of the room, clear fluid — vodka, and pickle brine — course down from the twin dents made by his makeshift projectiles.

 

 _Did I throw those?_ he thinks, and looks back down at his hand. It's bleeding. Blood. _Blood will out, blood will have blood, blood is thicker than water, oh how terribly his father bled..._

 

What _are_ these thoughts? Kyril has careened off the road, he is no longer at the wheel. Something dark and dangerous is steering him now — is sending him headlong into ruin. His thoughts have not been this disordered, incoherent or chaotic in a long time. The last occurrence he can remember is when his mother came to see him in prison.

 

To say happy birthday, welcome to adulthood, goodbye forever.

 

He _longs_ for Rey. If she were here, she would know how much he's had to drink. She would clean and dress his hand. She would get in the shower with him, and there they would stay until they were scrubbed pink and raw and clean. They would climb into bed after, and there they would have sex, slow, so he could savor every noise she made. After, they'd talk about their plans for tomorrow, and the next day, and the one after that, and next week, next year, their lives—

 

The room smells awful. His hand is burning, the glass still buried in his skin. His expensive antique table is most likely ruined. The wall is a mess. Vodka and pickle brine drip from everything.

 

Kyril, only just noticing at this moment that he's been standing, sits down again. He puts his head in his hands, disregarding the blood that now smears his cheeks.

 

Then, finally, finally — only to himself, only in this moment of weakness — he allows for this truth: he bent when he should _not_ have, and he did not bend when he _should_ have.

 

And now, now, he is ready to concede — now, he is _broken_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I'm sorry. I promise, this is the low point for our poor star-crossed lovers. And now, translations!
> 
> "Мы подготовили твои документы, и мои почти готовы." _[My podgotovili tvoi dokumenty, i moi pochti gotovy]_  
>  **We’ve prepared your documents, and mine are almost ready.**
> 
> "Мы точно знаем, что Luke информатор?” _[My tochno znayem, chto Luke informator?]_  
>  **Do we know for certain that Luke is an informant?**
> 
> “У нас есть надёжный источник, но даже если бы его не было, ты же не собираешься ставить под сомнение моё слово?” _[U nas est' nadezhnyy istochnik, no dazhe esli by ego ne bylo, ty zhe ne sobiraesh'sya stavit' pod somnenie moe slovo?]_  
>  **We have a solid source, and even if we didn't, are you trying to say you don't believe my word?**
> 
> "Luke должен умереть, Kyril. Ты знаешь, как это работает. Ты уже не школьник, вот и веди себя соответствующе.” _[Luke dolzhen umeret', Kirill. Ty znayesh', kak rabotayet. Ty bol'she ne shkol'nik, ne vedite sebya tak.]_  
>  **Lyuk dolzhen umeret', Kirill. Ty znaesh', kak eto rabotaet. Ty uzhe ne shkol'nik, vot i vedi sebya sootvetstvuyushche.**
> 
> "Мы встретимся с другими Ворами в Brighton Beach. Ты будешь моим личным охранником. Затем мы нанесём визит Luke.” _[My vstretimsya s drugimi Vorami v Brighton Beach. Ty budesh' moim lichnym okhrannikom. Zatem my nanesem vizit Luke.]_  
>  **We'll meet with the other Vori in Brighton Beach. You'll act as my personal security. And then we'll visit Luke.**
> 
> "Она не—” _[Ona ne—]_  
>  **She's not—**  
>     
> "Что, Рен?" _[Chto, Ren?]_  
>  **What's that, Ren?**
> 
> "Она моя... Я уже заплатил ей за неделю.”  
>  _[Ona moya... Ona moya... Ya uzhe zaplatil ey za nedelyu.]_  
>  **She's mine... I already paid her for the week.**
> 
> "Как экстравагантно. Ты не хочешь делиться? Что, её киска выложена опиумом?"  
>  _[Kak ekstravagantno. Ty ne khochesh' delit'sya? Chto, yeyo kiska vylozhena opiumom?]_  
>  **That was extravagant of you. You don't want to share? What, is her pussy lined with opium?**
> 
> "Куда вы идёте? Вам не следует одной ходить по дороге."  
>  _[Kuda vy idete? Vam ne sleduet odnoy khodit' po doroge.]_  
>  **Where are you going? You shouldn't be walking alone on the road.**
> 
> "...Вологда, девочка. Забирайся." _[Vologda, devochka. Zabiraysya.]_  
>  **...Vologda, girl. Get in.**
> 
> "cпасибо" _[spacibo]_  
>  **thank you**
> 
> "Тебе нужна помощь?" _[Tebe nuzhna pomoshch'?]_  
>  **Do you need some help?**
> 
> "Мой пальто, девочка... У тебя зубы во сне стучали.” _[Moy pal'to, devochka...U tebya zuby vo sne stuchali.]_  
>  **My coat, girl...Your teeth were chattering in your sleep.**
> 
> Name meanings!  
> [Kira](http://russian.languagedaily.com/names/russian-names-for-girls) comes from the Persian name Kurush, and means "far-sighted."
> 
> Links!  
> What were the [gulags](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag)?
> 
> What's a [Trabant](http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-iconic-cars-built-in-communist-russia.php)?
> 
> The snack Kira gives Rey is some kind of rye, perhaps [Borodinsky bread](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borodinsky_bread).  
>    
> What's a [rotary dial phone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_dial)? (Iol)
> 
> What [videos](https://imvdb.com/calendar/1993) would've been playing on MTv in early 1994?
> 
> What are some common [mistakes/errors](https://www.quora.com/When-native-Russian-speakers-speak-in-a-foreign-language-such-as-English-what-are-some-common-Russian-words-expressions-that-might-slip-into-the-conversation) native Russian speakers make when speaking English?
> 
> More information about Russian [trains](https://www.seat61.com/Russia-trains.htm)!
> 
> What _is_ that chocolate bar with the [baby on it](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasny_Oktyabr_\(confectionery_brand\))? (The name of the bar is "Alyonka.")
> 
> More about the [Seven Sisters](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_\(Moscow\)) and the [Kudrinskaya Square building](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudrinskaya_Square_Building).
> 
> More about Soviet [casualties](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union) during WWII.
> 
> What's a [yolka tree](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year_tree)?
> 
> Okay that's all from me! If this angsty chapter really bummed you out, come on over to [Tumblr](https://voicedimplosives.tumblr.com) and we'll [cry together](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WGFSOB9z68c).


	8. то, что должно быть обнаружено

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that which must be discovered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I don't even know how to say thank you for the love you've shown this fic and me. Please just know that any way you read/engage, I appreciate you. That being said, I really struggled with this chapter. If you liked what you read and have a minute to spare, I'd love to hear from you! ❤
> 
> HUGE thanks to the inimitable [Kachenka](http://luminousreylo.tumblr.com) for beta-ing this beast of a chapter! ❤❤
> 
> _(Don't worry, I said. This chapter will be a short one, I said. No one wants to read about Kyril and Irena being separated, I said. Aaaand here we are.)_
> 
> Thank you also to the [Smut Hutt Podcast](https://thesmuthuttpodcast.tumblr.com/), who gave a lovely shoutout to this fic in their first episode! Their round-table style discussion about fanfic was really wonderful and I'm excited to dig into all the rec's they threw out there!
> 
> Also, want to see a _beautiful_ [gifset](https://bruncmars.tumblr.com/post/174739808523/reylo-fanfic-favs-go-i-know-not-whither-and-fetch) moodboard from bruncmars? It's so stunning, thank you again!!
> 
> Lastly, as I said, I had some major insecurities about this chapter and both [arroways](https://arroways.tumblr.com) and [destinieswritten](https://destinieswritten.tumblr.com) were like my saintly fanfic therapists. Why? Because they are awesome, that's why! ❤
> 
> Okay sorry for babbling on and on — let's get this show on the road. ;)

The return to New York is a slog. Rey boards a packed flight at nine in the morning, already exhausted from all that has passed. Despite an attempt at freshening up in one of Sheremetyevo’s drafty bathrooms, she feels bedraggled and disheveled by the time she stows her bag in the overhead compartment and drops into her seat. She hasn't had a real night's sleep nor a shower since Plesetsk, when she and—

 

Well, in two days.

 

To add insult to injury, she then spends ten hours in a middle seat in the very last row of economy class, the only available option on such late notice. She dozes a little, but her dreams are twisting, mazy, full of dark corners — and perhaps defensively, she keeps jerking herself back to wakefulness.

 

Finally, she gives up and spends the last three hours of the flight staring at the back of the seat in front of her. She doesn't speak to any of her fellow passengers, hardens her heart against the longing she feels for company, even though the muffled Russian conversations remind her so much of—

 

Anyway. She uses the time to formulate a plan, of sorts — she'll go to Luke's, explain what she knows with a deeply redacted version of the truth, then badger him into leaving the city and hiding somewhere, preferably somewhere _not_ on the eastern seaboard.

 

 _It'll work_ , Rey tells herself, steeling her resolve. _It has to._

 

And then — _finally_ — they touch down, the heavy jet plane bouncing a few times before its wheels grip the tarmac and they begin to decelerate. How could she describe what she feels, at this moment, knowing she is irreversibly back on home turf?

 

Relief. Shock. Grim determination. _Sorrow_.

 

The strangest part of the whole journey is that after she has gone through customs, the officer tossing out a sarcastic ' _na zdrovie_ ’ upon checking Rey's documents, after she has navigated her way through the luggage claim area and out onto the curb where a fleet of honking yellow taxis stand waiting — it is only _one_ in the afternoon.

 

Melting patches of snow are visible between where the overhang of the airport's facade ends and the parking garage begins. And above, the sun shines brilliantly from high in a cloudless cerulean sky, the afternoon cold but clear — like a bookend to her arrival in Moscow.

 

How incongruous that feels to Rey, how she longs for driving sleet, growling thunder — a night so black and endless it swallows her up.

 

In any case, she decides to be extravagant — since life and death are on the line — and hails a cab, giving the driver Luke's address out in Brighton Beach before sinking into the leather bench seat.

 

The ride takes about a half hour, and Rey passes it staring out the window at the passing signs of Belt Parkway, the tired brick apartment buildings, the warehouses adorned with neon-colored graffiti.

 

She doesn't think about him. She _doesn't_.

 

But if she does, if she harbors in her mind a clandestine longing for the smell of him in her nose and the feeling of his strong arms wrapped around her — so strong that it threatens to pull her under if she gives it too much conscious attention — that's her business. On pain of death, she would not confess these thoughts to anyone.

 

As they race down the parkway, Rey is struck by how strange it is for everything to have changed so little — for it all to seem so _normal_ — when her entire life feels like it's been turned upside down.

 

She pays the driver after he pulls up out front of Luke's aging brick house. Despite her dejection, despite her exhaustion, it still puts a smile on her face to see it, the place that — to her tired eyes — looks as cozy and welcoming as ever.

 

She bolts up the steps, but is thrown for a loop when she turns the doorknob... and finds it's locked.

 

Rey has a key, of course, and lets herself in easily enough, but the locked door does nothing to calm her simmering unease. Not bothering to shuck her coat or even take off her backpack, she does a quick sweep through the downstairs — the dusty TV den, the brown-tiled bathroom, the kitchen, Luke's bedroom, bed still unmade and clothes scattered in piles around the hardwood floors. Nothing.

 

So she heads upstairs. Her old bedroom, partially converted into a home gym for Luke but still featuring the bed and dresser they went shopping for on the day he took her in, and a second bathroom, with painted black walls and all black trappings because Luke let sixteen-year-old Rey choose the color scheme.

 

Again, though — nothing.

 

_Where is Luke?_

 

Biting her lip to stave off the anxiety fighting to break free, she hurries back down the creaky stairs into the kitchen. She reaches for the phone, twisting her finger in the spiraling cord while she punches in the number of Luke's boxing gym, then waits.

 

One ring, followed by another — _oh God don't let me be too late, not when I made myself leave him there in the snow_ — a third — _not when I gave up the one thing I've wanted for so long_ — a fourth — _not when I tried so hard to get home as fast as I could—_

 

“Tatooine Boxing and Fitness,” says a male voice in his usual lax approach to professionalism.

 

“Luke?” Rey is going to break down all over again, she can sense it — her esophagus feels as though it is ringed with barbed wire. Breathing seems difficult all of sudden, speech an impossibility. Still, she manages to choke out, “Where have you been? I've been trying to reach you for _days_!”

 

“Ah, shit,” he says, sighing. “Rey. Glad to hear your voice, kid. How’s Russia? Sorry 'bout being MIA, I've been hiding out here, trying to get caught up with the books before tax season. I missed you, y'know? That old house is lonely, without you around.”

 

“Stay there,” she gasps, then takes a deep, steadying breath. “I'm here at the house, and I'm coming over now.”

 

“ _What_?” she hears him shout, but she's already dropping the phone back into the cradle.

 

. . .

 

Tatooine Boxing and Fitness is heavy on the boxing, light on the ‘fitness.' Although Rey supposes, in a sense, boxing _is_ fitness. In any case, it's not a gym for aerobics fiends or serious bodybuilders; the purpose of this place is very clear from the moment a person steps inside.

 

When Luke formally retired from his career, after holding onto his status as the welterweight champion of the world for four good years, he took all the money he'd earned and bought two things: his house, and this gym, whose name derives from some inside joke he's never shared with Rey.

 

There is a smell that greets her like an old friend when she opens the heavy steel door and passes inside; lingering densely in the stale air, almost like a physical presence, are the mingling remnants of old sweat and fresh sweat, of rubber and rope and leather, and underneath it all, the sharp scent of citrus disinfectant.

 

It's just one big room, one wall encompassed by floor-to-ceiling mirrors, exposed cinder block comprising the others. It's harshly lit by hanging fluorescent lamps and a strip of high, small clerestory windows. There is training equipment everywhere, a weight rack near the mirrors, and in the center of the room, the main attraction: a boxing ring.

 

Rey pauses for a moment to breathe it all in, to let her eyes — thirsty, all of a sudden, for familiar sights — drink in the old gym.

 

Two wiry tattooed men are sparring in light-footed circles around the ring, another works a speed bag in the corner, and a fourth is jumping rope, the incessant thwacking of his rope against the rubber mat like the rapid rat-a-tat of gunfire. They all glance her way when she enters the gym, but pay her no more notice than that.

 

And at the far end of the room, leaning against a doorway that leads into his small cluttered office, is Luke.

 

“Rey!” he calls out, over the jump rope and the grunts of the boxing men.

 

The relief that courses through her is immeasurable, beyond what she expected. But it is edged in something spiky, something she has not prepared herself for: regret. She pushes that down, setting it aside for a quiet time when she can take it out and examine it at her leisure.

 

Scurrying towards him, Rey accepts his outstretched arms and returns his hug with vigor.

 

“Come on in,” he says, releasing her and stepping into his office. Rey follows, and collapses onto his dilapidated leather couch while he closes the door. She drops her backpack on the cement floor by her feet. He sits down in his desk chair, and sighs.

 

“So,” he starts. “I'm guessing by that shiner you're sporting—" he gestures towards the yellowing bruise under Rey's eye, then continues, " _plus_ your tone when you called, your rushing over here _and_ your early return, that—things did _not_ go well.”

 

“Yes and no,” she hedges, unsure how to jump into this now that Luke is before her, unharmed. “I found Vershinino. There was—I met someone. He, uh, helped me out a lot. But the village was abandoned. It was a dead end.”

 

“God,” sighs Luke. “I'm sorry, kid.”

 

“Yeah,” she says, swallowing thickly. “It sucks, but—there's something else. More important. I mean, it's more important right now.”

 

He tilts his head, a crease appearing between his grey eyebrows. “What's up?”

 

Rey takes a deep breath. _Just say it, get it over with._

 

“Why didn't you tell me you were working for the FBI, spying on the Russian mafia?”

 

Luke goes so still that it is only the deep, slow breaths he is taking that let her know he has not turned to stone. He blinks, then blinks again more rapidly, then looks away, surveying the stacks of paper gathered upon his desk.

 

“I didn't tell you,” he says at last, measured, hushed, “because you weren't supposed to _know_. Nobody was. Kind of the idea behind that sort of work. But—you do. Would you like to tell me how?”

 

“The guy who helped me,” she says. “He—he—he knew you, he works for the, um—"

 

Luke barks out a harsh laugh. “Oh, that is _rich_. No, really, the universe is truly absurd. What a small world… You went to Russia, and just so happened to meet a member of the Solntsevskaya Bratva? Or was it the Tambovskaya? And he, what—he helped you get to your birth place, is that what you're telling me? Somehow you managed to find yourself a friendly mobster tour guide? What _are_ the fucking odds?”

 

Rey nods, takes another deep breath. He's so fired up, if she didn't know better she might mistake his tone for accusatory. She adds, “Not just _any_ friendly mobster tour guide, Luke.”

 

Tilting his head back, he frowns at her. “What do you mean?”

 

She bites her lip, then looks down at the cracked and peeling leather on the arm of the couch. Idly, she begins to pick at it.

 

“Kyril Ren,” she whispers, blinking hard as she fights for control over the anguish the name evokes. It's the first time she's said it out loud since she left him.

 

Luke goes still again, his electric blue eyes boring a hole into her face. “No. You didn't. He—that’s not _possible_.”

 

Miserably, Rey gives a tiny nod.

 

“That stupid—” Luke growls, then reins himself in, before continuing more impassively, “Ben Solo. I guess—he's out of prison? Again?”

 

Another nod.

 

“And he was the one who told you about what I've been doing?”

 

“He—kind of had to. We ran into his boss.”

 

“Ivan Snoke?” Luke asks, leaning forward. His hands land heavy on her knees, and he shakes them until Rey looks up at him. “Snoke _saw_ you? Did he talk to you? What did he say, Rey? What _exactly_ did he say to you? Did _he_ give you that bruise?"

 

“He didn't, no, he—he was speaking in Russian, with—Kyril. They were talking about business, I guess—I heard them mention your name, and Brighton Beach. Afterwards, after Snoke left, that's when he—Kyril, I mean—told me that, well, they know. About you.”

 

“Okay. Got it. But _Snoke_ , Rey,” Luke presses, paying almost no heed to her big revelation, “did he look at you? Did he speak to _you_?”

 

“Yeah,” she admits. “He grabbed my ass. He's a really bad guy, isn't he?”

 

“That's one way to put it,” Luke sighs, slumping back into his chair. “He didn't try to hurt you?”

 

“What? No. I'm pretty sure he was hitting on me, in his own gross way,” she says. Then, after a moment, “Luke, how—I mean, what—” She trails off, unsure exactly what it is she wants to ask first.

 

“Started when I opened the gym,” he reminisces quietly, helping her out. “Location was good, I guess, for the members of the Solntsevskaya. First there was one, then he brought a friend, then before I knew it half my clientele consisted of these guys. Tattooed Russians, all of 'em with an abysmal grasp on the English language. But hey, business is business, right? Didn't think much of it, for a long time.”

 

“Oh—kay,” she says, still picking at the couch as she studies Luke's weary, scruffy face. “And—then? Something changed?”

 

“Got a call from an agent, asked if we could meet. Some real Deepthroat stuff, to be honest. Top secret. They told me who the Russians were, and what they were up to, said I had a unique opportunity to earn their trust since they were in my gym all the time. The agents said—that I could eavesdrop, relate back what I heard. I felt—well, I thought it was the right thing to do.”

 

“Do you _now_?” she asks, in a small voice. As he's been speaking, something has occurred to Rey — _if Luke still believes in what he's doing, what if he won't leave?_

 

“Damn straight,” he says, with conviction. “These are _not_ nice men, Rey.”

 

“But they _know_ about you! They're coming for you—Kyril, and I think maybe Snoke too. You should—Luke, let's get out of New York. It's too dangerous! They're gonna _kill_ you,” she blurts out.

 

“Guess it's a good thing I have the Federal Bureau of Investigation on my side then, isn't it?” he asks, cocking an eyebrow. “They warned me this might happen, that I needed to be ready for this.”

 

“So? Isn't that a reason to run?”

 

Luke sighs. “There's a protocol in place, Rey. A procedure for this that was decided on, a long time ago. I'm not really at liberty to tell you much more than that, but—I'll be okay.”

 

“Because you're leaving,” she clarifies, nodding with each word. “Luke, tell me you're _leaving_.”

 

He gives her a tight smile. “Can't. Not without lying to you.”

 

“Oh come _on_!” Rey shouts, the simmering unease boiling over into full-blown pique. “This is _insane_ , Luke, they're fucking mobst—”

 

“ _Irena Imyarek_ , you keep your voice down—so help me _God_ ,” Luke hisses with such vehemence that it stops Rey mid-sentence. She takes in his tense posture, his strained face.

 

_Why wouldn't he want her to shout?_

_Who does he not want listening to this conversation?_

 

Rey glances at the closed door. “They're—those men out there—”

 

“Two of them, yes. You didn't notice the tattoos?” he fumes.

 

“I didn't think to look that closely,” she says, feeling faint.

 

“Then it's probably for the best, I guess, that _I'm_ the informant and you're my lovely daughter who _isn't_ involved in this, _at all_.” There isn't anything relaxed or lackadaisical about Luke now; he's staring at her without blinking, his gaze solemn. “There—are—protocols,” he adds, enunciating each word. “Panic is not one of them.”

 

It's Rey who slumps now, deflated. Whatever energy was driving her homeward, that razor edge of fear and love that has kept her wired for the past two days — it's gone now.

 

“I _am_ involved in this,” she mumbles, a weak protest — she's lost the fight, and she knows it. Luke looks back over his papers. She watches his Adam's apple bob as he swallows.

 

“I regret that.”

 

Unable to think of a response, she worries her lip. Finally, she asks, “Did you know? That the Bratva is onto you?”

 

“I suspected they were,” he concedes, with a tired grin. “I've been preparing myself for it.”

 

“Were you going to leave without telling me?” she asks, plaintive, a wobble in her voice that makes her cringe.

 

“No, Rey,” Luke says. He shakes his head, and grabs her hand so he can squeeze it. “I was going to take you _with_ me, when the time came to leave. You're family, after all.”

 

She nods. It's not a perfect answer, she's not completely satisfied with how this conversation has gone, but she's gotten enough answers for now, she supposes, and — she suspects — as many as Luke is going to give.

 

“Luke?” Rey squeezes his hand in return.

 

“Yeah, kid?”

 

“I really, really love you.”

 

Another tight smile. “I love you too, Rey. Now, I don't want to be mean, but you look like ten different kinds of sleep-deprived shit and you smell like a hamster cage. Why don't you go home, huh? Take a shower, get some rest.”

 

“Yeah,” breathes Rey. “Home. Okay.”

 

. . .

 

That night, she dreams that Kyril is fucking her.

 

It's not the sensual, beautiful love-making they shared in the few days they had together. This is raw, and unrelenting, and unforgiving.

 

What Rey will find strange later is that she cannot remember anything leading up to their fucking. That afternoon, when she stumbles into her apartment after riding the Q train back from Luke's, she doesn't so much go to sleep as she does succumb to exhaustion. She couldn't say if she begins dreaming immediately, or if day passes into night before her mind conjures up this erotic scene. All she knows is that she falls into her unmade bed and the minute her head hits the pillow, she's asleep.

 

And then, without preamble, she is dreaming that they're fucking.

 

They're on their knees in a bed, which is not the bed they shared in the dacha because it has a headboard and is high off the ground. The room around them is dark, decorated richly with expensive, sumptuous furnishings.

 

She is paying particular attention to the headboard because her hands are clenched tightly around it, Kyril's solid body draped over hers, keeping her bent in half. His hands are wrapped over hers, and the headboard is shaking with each propulsive thrust of his hips.

 

“Milaya,” he groans in her ear so soft, at the same time that he is so hard and thick, driving up into her dripping cunt. It is the only soft thing he offers — this sweet word he kisses into her shoulder — as he fucks her.

 

She rests her forehead against the wall, feeling hot — fevered, really, inside the cage of his arms and body — building towards what dream-Rey is certain will be a devastating climax. He's hitting deep, the angle is just right, his cock lights up each internal nerve like a goddamned Christmas tree. His body is plastered to hers like a second skin and he thrusts, thrusts, thrusts—

 

— _almost, she's almost there, it's so hot, how he's just making her_ take _it, and in return just taking whatever he wants_ —

 

And then she is awake, her eyes snapping open in an instant. Dull light filters in from the lone bedroom window, diminished because it looks out into a narrow alley. It offers no hint as to the time of day.

 

Fleecy snowflakes are unhurriedly floating downwards. For a while, she lays exactly how she woke — sprawled out on her belly, neck twisted to one side — and occupies herself with tracking their whimsical descent.

 

Frustration and liquid heat pool low in her gut. She shifts slightly, her neck starting to cramp, and that's when she feels it: her underwear is soaked with something sticky, viscous. She takes a quick peek; it's blood, rusty carmine red and already beginning to stain the inseam of her flannel pajamas.

 

 _This is good_ , she tells herself. _One less thing to worry about._

 

And if her heart is quietly singing out a different tune? That's hardly _her_ fault. She can't be blamed for the nonsensical things she secretly wants, even the ones she knows are bad for her. What's important is that Rey doesn't give into them — she didn't stay, she's not pregnant, and now she truly has nothing left of him — but she made the _right_ choice, dammit.

 

 _I'm okay,_ she thinks, as she peels herself off the mattress and shuffles into the bathroom. _I'm a good person—I’m a survivor. They_ can _be one and the same. I did the right thing._

 

After she takes care of her business, she rinses out the garments and submerges them in a bucket of warm water. She leaves them under the sink to soak, not worrying about what Poe and Finn will think — they have long since grown accustomed to this sort of thing.

 

An enchanting aroma wafts into the tiny bathroom, buttery and sweet. Rey smiles at the reflection of her bruised face in the mirror, rehearsing until her expression belies the ambivalence that eats at her, then ambles out into the cramped living room and kitchenette. Poe is stationed at the counter in front of their electric griddle, mid-flip on a batch of pancakes, while Finn stands in the center of the living room, spine straight and hands aloft, methodically working his way through a series of Tai chi forms.

 

The mellifluous voices of an NPR talk show and the whisper of snowflakes tapping against the windows serve as aural backdrop to the peaceful scene.

 

“Morning, honey,” Poe says, glancing back at her with raised eyebrows. “Are we gonna talk about why you're home early from your big jetsetter vacation, or—what the _hell_ happened to your eye?”

 

“No,” Rey grunts, folding herself up in their second-hand armchair. “That is a three beer talk, _minimum_ , and it's—” she checks the clock on the wall above their couch, “—only nine am.”

 

Poe blows a raspberry at her before turning his attention back to the pancakes. She gets a raised eyebrow from Finn as well, but he's very dedicated to his morning Tai chi and not much can _really_ break his concentration — not even her unanticipated return.

 

“You want some of the first batch?” Poe calls, over his shoulder.

 

The pancakes smell too good to resist. Rey gives Poe a sleepy smile, extending her arms and wiggling her fingers at him. He rolls his eyes, smirking, then piles a stack of three gargantuan pancakes on one of their many mismatched plates, making sure to douse them liberally with syrup and spear a fork through their center before he crosses the room and hands the plate to her.

 

“Welcome home, Rey. We missed you,” he says. His voice is as warm and peppery as ever, and he leans over to gently peck the top of her head.

 

And then, all at once, it is too much. The soft sound of snow falling, the affectionate gesture from Poe, the pancakes — so similar to another breakfast made for her by a man who _loves_ her — _goddamnit he_ does _and she should've stayed, or made him run with her, and now he's gone, she's lost him and he's gone forever, and what if that was her one big chance at love and she blew it, what if no one ever loves her like Kyril does, what if she doesn't_ want _anyone else to love her like that—_

 

“Hey, hey,” Finn is saying, his arms around her. Poe holds the plate of pancakes again, frowning worriedly down at her, because Rey is splitting at the seams, shaking, losing whatever thin veneer of control she's held onto during the long journey home.

 

Finn rocks her, to and fro, a gentle soothing motion, and wipes the hot tears from her cheeks. “It's okay, Rey, it's okay. We're here for you. We're here."

 

And so they are. And so is she. But he is not. And now she knows, without any shadow of a doubt, that she has nothing of him — nothing to love her back, nothing with her eyes and his hair, nothing to help her remember a love that caught like a forest fire and burned her alive. Nothing for the long, lonely years ahead.

 

Rey buries her face in Finn's shoulder, and for a second time — she lets herself sob.

 

. . .

 

After she has cried her share, and given an edited account of the last week to her roommates whilst picking at her pancakes, Rey showers and heads into work. But because she's back early, she’s not on the schedule for another week. She lifts weights for a while, but her heart's not in it, so she bundles up and jumps on the Q train, riding it all the way back out to Luke's.

 

She forgot that she left an umbrella there, before she went to Russia. Who knows if she'll need it?

 

Luke greets her with a wry smile and an offer of dinner, so of _course_ she stays for the afternoon, then the evening. They watch a couple of movies on VHS, rented from a nearby Blockbuster, and afterwards, the evening news. Then it's just too _late_ to leave, the subways aren't safe at this time of night, so she fakes a theatrically big yawn, and informs Luke she'll be staying over. He shrugs his acceptance, gives her a quick hug, and heads off to his bedroom.

 

Rey never goes upstairs to hers. She spends the night in the TV den, positioning Luke's ratty barcalounger so she can sit and keep vigil at the bay window which looks out onto the small front lawn and the street.

 

The next day, after Rey watches the sun come up, she makes coffee for her and Luke, then goes for a run. She finds an old pair of jeans and a sweater from high school in her bedroom upstairs, and changes into them after showering.

 

“I think I'll go to the gym with you today,” she mentions offhandedly to Luke, while they're eating oatmeal and drinking their second round of coffee together.

 

“Oh?” he asks, brow furrowed.

 

“Yeah, my boxing skills are getting rusty,” she lies. “Could use some brushing up.”

 

“Uh- _huh_ ,” says Luke. He offers no further comment than one raised eyebrow, and she gives no more reasoning than an insouciant shrug.

 

They go three rounds together later that morning, and she beats him with her right hand pinned behind her back. It's not _Rey_ who's rusty.

 

“Come on, old man!” she taunts, while they circle each other in Luke's training ring. “Can't _stand_ to see you butcher the art of boxing like this!”

 

“You brat,” he huffs out, winded, grinning at her.

 

Grinning back, Rey winks at him, right before she socks him with her killer left hook.

 

She doesn’t mention the fact that before and after they spar, she spots at least six men with very familiar-looking tattoos working out in the gym. But she does make a mental note of their faces. Just in case.

 

Rey is forced to return to her apartment that night, but she only stays long enough to peck Finn and Poe on the cheek, offering a vague explanation about 'father-daughter bonding’, and pack a few changes of clothes plus her toiletries into her canvas backpack. Then, like a boomerang, she's back on the subway, on her way to Luke's house once more.

 

“You're like a bad penny,” he says, looking up from the crossword he's doing at the kitchen table when she steps through his front door. “Can't seem to get rid of you.”

 

“Easier for me to just stay here until my classes start up again next week,” she says with a warm smile, failing to tell him she called this afternoon and requested two more weeks off. They gave her the time, too, because this is the first vacation she's taken in years.

 

She'll tell him that soon, of course — next week, maybe. Or whenever she thinks of a good excuse.

 

She adds, “Especially if we're going to be training.”

 

“ _Are_ we training, Rey?” Luke queries, putting his pencil down. He glances at her as she sits down at the table. “I seem to remember hanging my gloves up.”

 

“Not a reason to let yourself go, old man.” Rey pokes a finger into Luke's soft stomach and cackles at his indignant huff.

 

“Hey! I had a lot of lean years, boxing as a welterweight. I've earned the right to a little extra padding,” he sniffs.

 

“If you say so,” she beams at him, and rises from the chair. Digging around in his kitchen drawers, she lets out a triumphant shout when she finds the menu she's looking for.

 

“Pizza?” she asks, wiggling it in Luke's direction.

 

“Pepperoni,” he agrees.

 

Later, though, once it's been delivered, Rey finds that she doesn't have much appetite after all. She packs up the extra slices and stores them in the fridge, promising Luke they'll make a good midnight snack. But that night, after Luke shuffles off the bed, Rey is too preoccupied with her vigil to think about leftovers. The slices go uneaten.

 

Thus, a new routine is formed: coffee, run, sparring and weight training, sometimes a second run if her nervous energy is _still_ not depleted. Then, a light afternoon nap plagued by sex dreams, a dinner she can barely eat, a few hours spent watching movies or TV, Luke goes to sleep, and she takes up her nocturnal watch.

 

It's untenable, Rey knows, but that's okay. It’s not forever. They'll come for him, eventually, and when they do — she’ll be ready.

 

. . .

 

Three days later, after a dinner of borscht and pierogies — which doesn't remind her of _anyone_ or upset her at all, she promises Luke, rebuffing his concerns when her appetite fails her once again — they settle in to watch _Seinfeld_ together. It's a rerun of an episode from earlier this season, recorded on VHS tape by Luke. In the episode, not much happens... besides Jerry wearing a puffy shirt.

 

“Luke,” Rey says, as the credits roll. “Do you have a phone number? For your—for your sister, Leia?”

 

It's an idea she's been ruminating on since she returned and she's finally ready to put it into action.

 

“Why?” Luke asks, voice sharp. His eyes are too, when they steal a sideways glance at her.

 

“I've heard so much about her,” she says, reciting the speech she has prepared in response to this question. “And now that I've met Kyril—”

 

“I'm _not_ giving you my sister's number so you can yammer at her about that no-good son of hers. It'll only hurt her.” Luke's eyes are trained on the TV now, where the next recorded episode of Seinfeld is beginning.

 

“Okay, I'll just mention him in _passing_ ,” she concedes, having also expected this response. “And if she has any kind of negative reaction, I won't say another peep. I'll just tell her I _really_ liked Russia and I hope to visit again some time.”

 

“Do you? Plan to visit again?” he asks, but Rey suspects that's not the question he's really asking, if his dark lour is anything to go by. When she doesn't answer right away, just chews her lip and stares back at him, Luke sighs. “I'm sure he's grown up to be a handsome man, Rey. I could _tell_ he was gonna be a lady killer, even when he was a teen. But—you know what he is? The things he's done?”

 

“Yeah,” Rey croaks. “I _do_ know.” This is too excruciating a topic, this open wound whose name is Kyril, and desperate to redirect them back to her mission, she vows, “I'm _not_ going back. Really, I just—I want to talk to her. Please, Luke. For—closure.”

 

Another heavy sigh, and his eyes on her — stormy lapis blue in the dim light — seem even heavier.

 

“I trust you,” he says, each word chained to the next by the inherent responsibility in their meaning. “I trust your judgement, Irena. You want her number, you can have it. But—”

 

He pauses.

 

“But?”

 

“ _You're_ paying the long-distance fees,” he says, offering her a small smile.

 

. . .

 

The phone rings four times before a woman picks up, her voice husky and good-humored. “Hello?”

 

“Hi, this is, uh, can I speak to Mrs. Madam Ambassador Solo, please?” Rey cringes at her awkward phone manners. Not a terribly important skill to learn, when you bounce around so frequently as a child that no one knows your phone number, but she's been practicing that line for twenty minutes and _still_ managed to mess it up.

 

“This is she,” says Leia, amused. “With whom am I speaking?”

 

Rey clears her throat, determined to match this woman's graceful equanimity. “Ma'am, my name is Irena Imyarek, and I'm Luke Skywalker’s—uh, Irena.”

 

“Ah,” Leia hums, “I've heard of you, although Luke keeps his cards very close to his chest—so I haven't heard _much_. You teach martial arts, is that correct?”

 

“Well, kind of, but I—yes, that's basically correct,” Rey says, “but—”

 

“That's a noble thing to do, I think. Teaching others to defend themselves.”

 

 _Your son agrees_ , she thinks. “Thank you,” she says.

 

“Well, Irena, it's nice—”

 

“Rey, you can call me Rey,” she interrupts.

 

“Ah.” Leia sounds faintly bemused, as if Rey has told her a childish anecdote. “Rey. It's nice to put a voice to a name. Is there something I can help you with, Rey?”

 

“I, uh—yes,” she says. And then, awkwardly, stopping and starting a mortifying amount of times, um-ing and uh-ing her way through the most difficult parts, Rey regales Leia with the entire sordid story of her time in Russia, withholding nothing save for the more _explicit_ details of her and Kyril's communion.

 

In the back of her mind, a nagging voice reminds her that this is exactly what she promised Luke she would _not_ do. But it's the middle of the night right now. She can hear him snoring all the way from the kitchen where she sits with her back against the refrigerator, twisting her fingers up in the dangling phone cord while she rambles nervously, and to be honest—

 

Rey needs this. Terribly.

 

So, selfishly perhaps, she talks, and she talks, and she talks. Through all of it, Leia remains silent, although she knows the woman is still there because she can hear her huffed exhalations of mirth or sympathy, at various points in the saga. Rey watches the clock above the table as she rambles; ten minutes pass, then another, and then she has spoken for an entire forty-five minutes without pause.

 

 _Luke is going to kill me when he sees the phone bill,_ she thinks, as she sums up with: “And then I arrived home in New York.”

 

Leia sighs, and Rey thinks she can hear the clink of ice being dropped in a glass, the glug-glug of a drink being poured.

 

“Luke is—alright?” she asks, at last.

 

“Yeah,” Rey sighs. “He's being stubborn, he says the FBI has some kind of master plan, but—he's okay, for now. I'm here, I'm—keeping watch.”

 

“I see. He's not just being obstinate, you know, there really _is_ a plan. We thought of it together, along with the agents on the case, a long time ago,” she offers.

 

“You knew what he's been doing, all this time?”

 

“My dear,” says Leia, “ _who_ do you think suggested to the director of the FBI that Luke act in this capacity, after my brother told me about the Russians at his gym?”

 

Rey takes a minute to absorb that, trying to ascertain her response — shock? Respect? Distrust? All of them, jumbled together?

 

“Wow. Puppet master,” she mutters.

 

“Hmm,” Leia hums, again. “My son. You—there are—” Here, for the first time in the conversation, she falters. “There are feelings, between the two of you. If I may be so bold.”

 

Rey can't be sure of course, but if she had to guess, she would say that it sounds like Leia is holding her breath.

 

“Uh—yeah,” she says, flatly. “Actually, ma'am—Leia, that's beside the point. 'Cause—he's in trouble, I think. I think Kyril is in a _lot_ of trouble.”

 

“Yes, that sounds like him.”

 

“No, I mean—” Rey hesitates, sagging lower against the fridge. _What_ does _she mean? What did she expect Leia to say, really?_

 

_Does Leia even care if her own son lives or dies?_

 

“Yes?” Leia prods. “What _do_ you mean, Rey?”

 

“Please,” she chokes out. “I know he's done bad things. Maybe he's broken your heart, maybe he's broken mine. But please—”

 

Leia stays silent, although Rey can hear her finishing her drink, and pouring herself another.

 

“Mmm?” she prompts. “Let's say that he has. And?”

 

“I think he's _still_ a good person. I think he has a lot of remorse, about—his father, and the things he's done. I think he still loves you and misses you, because he can barely talk about you without getting upset,” she pushes out, in a gravelly whisper.

 

“I see,” Leia says, again.

 

“Please don't give up on him,” says Rey. She stares at the clock, at the bulky silhouettes of the furniture in the dark kitchen, and the doorway just visible down the hallway, behind which Luke is sleeping.

 

“Please,” she repeats.

 

“Thank you, I understand. You've given me a lot to think about but I'm afraid I _do_ have work to do today, Irena. I appreciate your telling me this,” Leia says, perhaps the most she has spoken during the entire call. Her tone is curt, but then she seems to soften, adding, “I can see why he'd like you, by the way.”

 

“Oh,” says Rey, after a moment's pause. “Thanks.”

 

But Leia has already hung up, and the line has gone dead.

 

. . .

 

One week after his return to Moscow, Kyril is yanked from the Cimmerian labyrinth of his dreams by a two-pronged attack: the terrible sensation of being strangled, and a shrill, jarring clangour that echoes throughout his apartment.

 

The first is solved easily enough; during his dreamland wanderings, his body has also been active, and he is twisted up in his Egyptian cotton sheets. Groaning from the aching stiffness in his joints, he disentangles himself.

 

The second painful stimulus, he comes to realize as he slowly returns to full consciousness, is the ringing of his phone in the kitchen. His body protests when he throws his legs over the side of his king-sized bed: his stomach goes into full-scale revolt and his hungover brain throbs, as if it has been stuffed full of thorn-barbed wool.

 

 _Everything_ hurts. But then, a week-long bender will do that.

 

He stumbles from room to room, stubbing his toes twice because his eyes refuse to focus, before he finally reaches the kitchen.

 

Yanking the cordless phone from its cradle he croaks, low and guttural, “What?”

 

“Ren? You're alive! I've been trying to reach you for _two_ days,” says Mitaka, sounding tinny over the poor connection.

 

“What's the problem?” he rasps, wedging the phone between his ear and his shoulder. He fills a glass with chilled bottled water, then carries it back through his apartment towards the bathroom.

 

“I need to see you. It's important, and—it can't wait much longer.”

 

“Dammit, Mitaka, what's happened?”

 

He reaches for the bottle of paracetamol from his medicine cabinet, shaking out a few, and tosses them back with the water.

 

“It's, uh—I'd rather not talk about it over the phone. Will you meet me? In one hour, let's say, at the McDonald's.”

 

Kyril groans, his stomach turning over in protest at the water and the thought of processed fast food.

 

“Two? Let's make it two.”

 

“It's not a good—”

 

“Please. Kyril, I—just, please.”

 

Everything hurts. All he wants to do is crawl back into bed and die. His whole body is drenched with acrid sweat, nauseating adrenaline is making his heart pound erratically, and the last thing wants to do is have a lunch date with fucking _Smyrnoi Mikhailov Mitaka_.

 

 _But the fresh air and food might actually help,_ he admits to himself. Kyril is not certain what time it is, nor can he actually recall how many days it's been since he last left his apartment.

 

“Please, man,” Mitaka pleads.

 

He paces out of the bathroom, across his bedroom to the window, then pulls back the curtain. Sunshine, bright and cheery, cuts through the dreary grandeur of his dark bedroom.

 

“Two hours.” He hangs up before Mitaka can reply.

 

. . .

 

The McDonald's is massive, and immaculate in comparison to so much of Moscow. Light streams in from the window-filled storefront; colorfully painted walls, a paneled ceiling, and hundreds of metal chairs and tables nailed to the tiled floors form an orderly scene of mass produced cheer. About half of the tables are occupied by parka-clad Muscovites. It takes Kyril a moment to locate Mitaka after he walks through the door, and while he's scanning the crowd, the pervasive smell of hot oil and sweaty Russian bodies makes his stomach heave anew.

 

He is reminded of a similar establishment, a happier time — when the probing glare of fellow customers made Rey jittery, nervous — how she leaned into his body when he put himself between them and her, how _good_ it made him feel to reassure her, protect her—

 

In an effort to redirect his thoughts, Kyril digs the blunt nails of his left hand into the bandaged gouge on his palm, made by the shattered vodka bottle several days ago. He bangs his elbow against the partially healed bullet wound in his ribs, for good measure.

 

The pain helps, a little.

 

When he finally finds Mitaka in the sea of grey coats and greyer faces, he sees that the man has already ordered for them, so he makes his way through the tables then sinks into the chair across from his brodyaga. Mitaka's hands are shaking; he nods without speaking, then passes Kyril a Big Mac, a packet of French fries, and a small paper cup filled with Coke.

 

Begrudgingly, Kyril throws one of the oil-laden fries in his mouth. The second the salty flavor travels from his taste buds to his brain — seemingly on a lag because of his sluggish state — he becomes aware of how ravenous he is, that he has not eaten in over a day.

 

The men sit in companionable silence while they devour their meals. After, Mitaka hands him an 'apple pie’ which he eats with equally joyless haste. _I know apple pie, and this is not that,_ he thinks disdainfully, remembering his father's attempts at re-creating the American dessert whenever Han and Leia had argued.

 

He'd been a surprisingly adept baker, and young Veniamin had loved Han’s makeshift apple pie most of all.

 

“Thanks,” says Kyril, when all that remains on the table between them is a heap of greasy, crinkled paper and cardboard. “Now. What do you want?”

 

“I killed the Hungarians,” Mitaka mutters, under his breath. “All of them. Helped deal with the remaining Tambovskaya in Vologda, too.”

 

Kyril tries to process this, but at the moment attempting any kind of complex thought is akin to thrashing about in quicksand — a losing battle.

 

“Okay,” he grunts, ineloquently. “And?”

 

Mitaka looks up from the ruins of his meal, his eyes searching Kyril's. “I can't do this anymore, Ren. I can't kill for—”

 

“For what?” Kyril snaps. Something like panic is making his chest tighten; the thought of Mitaka leaving, like everyone leaves, _she was right, I really am going to be all alone—_

 

“Did I ever tell you about my grandparents?” Mitaka asks, a seemingly abrupt and random change in topic.

 

“No.”

 

He smiles wistfully. “No, I don't suppose I did. Everyone already knows about _your_ grandfather, the famous American senator, and—”

 

“Is there a point you'd like to get to, Mitaka?” Kyril asks, closing his eyes and rubbing at his temples.

 

“Ah. Yes, although I think I might be procrastinating because it isn't easy to talk about,” sighs the brodyaga. “I never told you much about myself because most of it is a closely-kept secret. You see, my grandparents were deported from Chechnya by Stalin, Beria and the NKVD, along with most of our people, back in forty-four.”

 

At that, Kyril's eyes fly open, his jaw drops before he can school his features, hide his shock.

 

“You're—Chechen?”

 

Mitaka nods, doleful. “They were placed into one of those awful labor settlements until Kruschev reversed the laws—”

 

“Jesus,” says Kyril. “They were stuck there for the whole thirteen years?”

 

“We're a hardy people,” Mitaka affirms, shrugging. “After Stalin died, the laws were lifted and people began returning to Chechnya. But my grandparents decided—maybe out of spite, maybe hoping for a better life, I don't know—to stay. They took my mother, moved to Moscow, changed their names and told anyone who asked that they were from Stalingrad. That's ironic, isn't it? And—they _never_ spoke Chechen, never breathed another word about about their religion—not that many people did back in those days anyway. But they died with their secret; they're buried in a secular cemetery, here in Moscow. Imagine—giving up your self in the hopes of finding, well, whatever it was they were hoping to find. Prosperity, maybe.”

 

Mitaka's leg is bouncing under the table. He folds and unfolds a soiled paper napkin, his eyes scanning the busy scene around them.

 

Quietly, solemnly, Kyril asks, “Why are you telling me this, now?”

 

“Do you know much about what's happening in Chechnya these days?”

 

“Only that it's a mess,” mutters Kyril, frowning. “Like everywhere else.”

 

“An understatement, really. It's chaos there right now. Dudayev was elected in ninety-two; he's been rallying for Chechen independence ever since. This past June, he dissolved the parliament because they tried to take a vote of no confidence against him. Everything's falling apart, they barely have an educated sector—there's no one there to keep Ichkeria _running_ —let alone help the country move forward. And if they _do_ go to war, who will put the pieces of the country back together when it's over?”

 

Kyril nods, his frown deepening.

 

“They need engineers, Kyril. I have an engineering degree.” Mitaka glances at him, then back down at the napkin he has begun to shred.

 

He continues. “My grandfather always told me that the best people are those who are most useful to others. I could be useful, to Chechnya. What use am I to anyone, _here_?”

 

“Do you even speak the language? I've never heard a word of Chechen from you,” Kyril observes coolly.

 

Another sad smile. “They never taught it to my mother, she speaks only Russian—they wanted her to assimilate. But I think by the time I came along… they had softened, begun to yearn for their homeland. So they taught me to speak it, and they passed on their religion to me—but only ever in secret.”

 

Kyril takes a deep breath, studies Mitaka's waxen face, the dark shadows beneath his eyes, the bristly week's worth of a beard sprouting from his jaw and cheeks. It occurs to him, in this moment, that he has never made very much effort to _really_ get to know Mitaka.

 

“I'll be damned,” he breathes.

 

“Things _are_ a mess everywhere,” muses Mitaka. “Maybe it's something about this decade. Ten years of dissolution—maybe we've earned it after centuries of hegemony.”

 

“And if you're right, about Chechnya going to war? You're not _from_ there, Smyrnoi, even if your grandparents are. You're from here. You're Russian. You're _Solntsevskaya_ ,” Kyril argues.

 

“You know what I've learned from the Bratva? How to be a soldier. And Ichkeria may need soldiers, someday soon,” counters Mitaka. “Who _cares_ where I grew up, or how?”

 

His hands have ceased their shaking — it's as though he gathers conviction from each of Kyril's weak protestations.

 

“You really think Chechnya could ever be truly independent from Russia?” Kyril asks in an undertone, glancing around.

 

Shaking his head, Mitaka says, “I don't know, brother. But if I'm condemned to spending my life killing instead of working an honest trade—I'd rather it be for my ancestral homeland than for _Snoke_. I can't be his thug anymore, Kyril. I don't think I was ever meant to be _anyone's_ thug. I think I should've been there all along, helping.”

 

Kyril huffs out a flummoxed sigh at that. It sounds so similar to the daydreaming he'd done back at the dacha, wondering what might have been if he'd agreed to leave the USSR with Luke, and it strikes _very_ close to a very raw nerve—

 

 _You will always be a prisoner if you stay_ , she'd said. _If you let them make you a cold dead thing—_

 

“I don't think _you_ were, either,” Mitaka is saying, unaware of Kyril's momentary descent into reverie.

 

Kyril swallows, chews the inside of his cheek for a moment. Then, in an anguished mumble, he declares, “I did wrong by you, Smyrnoi. I should have left you alone—you would've found your way. Maybe with the Chechen syndicate, maybe in a legitimate career. Either way, you would've been better off.”

 

Mitaka says nothing for a long fraught minute. Blinking rapidly, he takes a sip of his Coke, stares up at the glowing, backlit menu of hamburgers and french fries.

 

Finally, he speaks. “We were never very close, Veniamin. Forced acquaintances, at best. Maybe you _did_ do wrong by me, maybe not. Maybe the world we grew up in did wrong by _both_ of us.”

 

Kyril rubs at his own eyes now, to fight against the stinging onset of tears he feels there. “What has it done to us, Mitaka?” he whispers. “What have we become?”

 

“Only what we allowed it to make us. But I'm done letting anyone, especially Snoke, tell me who I should or shouldn't be. The men I killed, back in Vologda? The youngest brother, he died too slowly. He told me he had a daughter, named Csenge. Two years old—”

 

Mitaka breaks off, inhaling deeply and resuming his napkin massacre. “What have _I_ done, to that girl? I don't know if I can ever be cleansed of my sins—towards her or any of the others—but… I'm ready to try. I'm ready to _atone_ ,” he concludes, with a resolute nod.

 

“If there's a war, there's no way Chechnya will win. You'd be going to your death,” Kyril croaks, a last ditch effort.

 

“I'm a Chechen,” says Mitaka, still shredding, still smiling sadly. “If my fate is to die for my people, then so be it.”

 

Kyril tilts his head, works his jaw, can think of nothing to say to that.

 

“No more evil, Ren. I want to do good, help bring about peace in my motherland.”

 

“And if the Chechen mafia sees your tattoos? You think they're going to embrace you with open arms? They'll hunt you down like a mad dog.”

 

“So be it,” sighs Mitaka.

 

Kyril lets out a defeated sigh of his own. “I really don't know you very well, do I, Mikhailov?”

 

Mitaka beams at that, a long overcast sky finally breaking up. “Not really, Hanovich,” he says. “But it's alright. I don't blame you. We're not children anymore though, nor are we Soviets. We are free to live and die however we see fit, now. So… how will you live, and—how will you die?”

 

That _does_ strike the raw nerve, a direct hit that detonates like a missile across his conscience.

 

“I don't know,” he gasps. He stares at the people around them; families, businessmen, old married couples, all of them blithely eating their Happy Meals, quietly chatting, perhaps indulging in their first taste ever of greasy, deep-fried capitalism.

 

He thinks of Luke, who offered a life steeped in the culture that spawned this restaurant — the good life, as so many of his compatriots used to call it. Easy street, America. And then he thinks of Rey, the ways in which both cultures have failed her. Still, this, McDonald's — it belongs more to her than it does to him. Does he hate it a little less, knowing it's a part of Rey's culture?

 

 _Is this freedom?_ he wonders. _Are we free now? Am I? Is she?_

 

_If we aren't, could we be?_

 

“Something to think about, perhaps on your flight to America,” Mitaka says after a while, when it's become clear that Kyril has no ready answers.

 

“Will you be coming?” Kyril asks.

 

Now it is Mitaka who falls silent, contemplative, before murmuring, “It's better for you, I think, if I don't say any more about my plans.”

 

Perhaps it is. Kyril acknowledges as much with a dip of his chin to his one-time subordinate, who suddenly — for the first time — feels like his equal, like an independent actor with his own interior life. How much Kyril has never noticed him, over the years. _What else has he missed about the world around him?_

 

“Good luck, Smyrnoi Mikhailov Mitaka,” says Kyril, to the man whom he feels he has just met for the first time.

 

“And to you, Veniamin Hanovich Solo. Marşa ġoyla.”

 

They both stand. It is a parting tinged with profound surprise, Kyril's; respect, both men's; and resolution, it seems, for Mitaka. The brodyaga — _no, no longer,_ Kyril thinks, _now he will find a new life as simply a man_ — offers his hand. Kyril takes it; the man's grip is firm, firmer than he remembers from any previous handshakes, and they lean in to share the customary hug.

 

“May Allah protect you,” Mitaka whispers in his ear, before pulling away. One more nod, and he turns, weaving his way out of the McDonald's.

 

Kyril sits at the table — eyes unfixed and mind reeling — until a peevish old woman carrying a red tray piled high with burgers comes over and shoos him away.

 

He walks the icy streets of the city for a long time after that, long after bitter-cold night has fallen — past the Red Square and Saint Basil’s Cathedral with its striped candy-colored domes; the copper-tipped towers of the brick-walled Kremlin; along the frozen, snow-dusted vein of the Moskva River; the neoclassical ivory columns of the Bolshoi Theater; the high steel fences of the desolate city zoo, through which he can just spy the unoccupied cages.

 

Kyril walks until exhaustion has snatched away his fetterless thoughts, until his limbs burn from the cold, until he can feel nothing, not even his broken heart—

 

Then he returns home to his beautiful, empty apartment.

 

. . .

 

The next morning, the first in a week in which he wakes sober and at a relatively normal hour, finds Kyril at loose ends. He should be making preparations, he supposes; instead he dawdles, spending a couple hours pouring over a newspaper he's picked up from a kiosk down on the street, near his building’s entrance. He reads it front to back, switching to tea after two cups of Turkish coffee. There's an article on the developing Chechen situation on the third page of the issue; he reads _that_ twice, jotting down the names of a few unfamiliar figures for future reference.

 

He's just beginning to think about what he should do with his day when the doorbell rings — a harsh buzzing note that startles him from the morning's languid detachment.

 

Ivan Ivanovich Snoke is at the door, when he cracks it open. Snoke pushes his way inside, brushing past Kyril with raised eyebrows. When the Krestniy Otets reaches the living room, he takes Kyril's favorite chair — an oversized Chesterfield covered in buttery soft leather — and crosses his legs, looking Kyril up and down.

 

“Having a lie-in?” he snaps.

 

Kyril merely grunts in the affirmative, perching on the adjacent couch.

 

“Did you forget what we talked about, or are you _trying_ to upset me, Ren?”

 

He examines Snoke for a long moment, attempting to suss out his game. It's like a battle of wills for which he is not armed — Snoke glowers at him, thin lips pursed tightly, and Kyril stares back, willing himself not to scratch his head in confusion.

 

“Uh—” he tries.

 

“Our conversation over the phone, three days ago?” prompts Snoke.

 

 _Fuck_. Kyril was in no state to be having a conversation about _anything_ three days ago, let alone one about sensitive business matters.

 

“I wasn't—” he starts again.

 

“You were clearly drunk. Still, I had _thought_ you were a man who could handle his alcohol. What is this about, Ren? Don't tell me you're going through another crisis of conscience about your traitorous father—we were all barely able to tolerate the last one.”

 

“It's nothing,” Kyril says. “I'm sober now.”

 

“But not _working_ , which is what you are _supposed_ to be doing. Is this about the whore? Has she snatched your heart with that little pussy of hers?”

 

He remains mute, does not meet Snoke's eyes. It's too close — he's too close to the truth. Instead of answering, Kyril runs his slippered feet through the thick pile of his Oriental rug, making patterns in the dark fibers.

 

“You should've shared her. If you had seen how readily she would've gone with anyone who had cash, you would've gotten over... whatever this is,” Snoke chides.

 

Kyril nods. Right foot brushes over the rug — now it is lighter. Left foot brushes it in the other direction. Now it is darker. Repeat. The silence draws on, a sharp-spined creature prowling the opulent room.

 

“You don't remember what establishments I told you to visit, do you?” Snoke asks, his voice a dangerously relaxed purr.

 

Kyril clears his throat. It's never good when he gets this calm. He wills some kind of convincing lie to spring forth, and despairs when all his mind offers is a blank slate. He is experiencing complete tabula rasa, unable to summon anything but his observation of how nice this rug is, how thick and luxurious it feels beneath his feet.

 

He shakes his head, not lifting his eyes.

 

“Then you'd better get a _fucking_ pen and paper this time, hadn't you?” Snoke seethes.

 

Kyril looks back to him now — his hands are talons, digging into the arms of the chair, his bony body leans forward like a falcon sizing up a rat. He blinks angrily at Kyril, his scarred brow furrowed, and Kyril—

 

Kyril, all at once, experiences a great deluge of thoughts, livid thoughts that scald him with their ferocity. They flood his mind like a crimson tide, but Kyril knows that to put voice to them, to utter even one of them — it would amount to heresy, as far as Snoke is concerned.

 

To speak his mind at this moment would be tantamount to suicide, and as it turns out, Kyril still has a sliver of self-preservation left in his exhausted body. So he rises from the couch with an acquiescent bow of his head towards the Krestniy Otets, then rushes towards his study to fetch a paper and pen.

 

. . .

 

The first place he drives to, in the brand new Mercedes whose title bears his name although he has only the vaguest drunken memory of purchasing it, is a popular restaurant and longstanding 'client’ of the Solntsevskaya. They pay him in wrinkled bills without complaint. He doesn't have to speak; the minute he walks in the front door, the owner's wife opens the till and begins to gather his payment. They serve him coffee while he waits.

 

No one in the entire place meets his eyes. Not once. Not even by accident.

 

. . .

 

The next few places — two night clubs, a bar, a corner market, a shashlik restaurant, then a Turkish one, then a Georgian one — they all proceed in the same fashion. This part of the job has always been arduous to him, and he has risen to a status where he should not be tasked with such demoralizing work. But Snoke is clearly punishing him, for Vologda and... perhaps for Rey, too.

 

Each encounter leaves him feeling emptier than the last.

 

 _I thought_ I _was lost_ , she'd said. _Until I met you._

 

 _I'll be your purpose_ , she'd said.

 

Kyril purses his lips, takes a right turn, and drives down a quiet side street towards his last stop of the day: a small bakery in the Presnensky district.

 

He chose what he chose, didn't he? And now here he is, here is his _glorious_ purpose: taking money from terrified business owners. His stomach is in no better condition today than it was yesterday, despite the lack of alcohol in his system; still it roils, still it ties itself into a heaving, incurable knot.

 

 _There is no rewriting the past_ , he reminds himself, as he parks the car and makes his way towards the sugar-scented bakery.

 

. . .

 

The baker is a relatively new client, added to the roster while Kyril was still incarcerated. Behind a glass case, pastries that originate from the four corners of the former Soviet Bloc are piled high on steel shelves: khachapuri cheese bread from Georgia, Balkan baklava drenched in sweet syrup, fruit-filled kolache cookies from Czechoslovakia, towering Russian honey cakes, and so on and so on, a veritable cornucopia of mouth-watering confectionery.

 

The heavy set blonde man stationed behind the display scowls at Kyril when he walks through the door.

 

“Here to collect,” says Kyril, monotone, apathetic. _He is bored, he is tired, he is preoccupied by his hatred for this soulless work—_

 

“No.”

 

Just like that, he is pulled from the fugue state that has befuddled him all day.

 

“What?” he snaps, unsure if his ears are playing tricks on him. The man's scowl wobbles; his eyes are hard and his arms are pulled behind his back, as though he is being restrained from leaping across the counter at Kyril by some invisible force.

 

“I said,” and here the man's voice cracks, just a bit, “ _No_. I'm not paying you anything. I worked hard to earn the money to open this place, and I'm sick of this, sick of you pushing me around. I barely have enough to pay the bills—”

 

“Don't do this,” Kyril warns him, the nausea rising in full force, bile gathering in his throat. “Just pay what you owe.”

 

“I don't _owe_ you anything!” he screams, specks of spittle landing on Kyril's wool coat. Red blotches have bloomed across his stodgy cheeks, a bulging vein in his forehead pulses, dark blue and dangerous.

 

Before Kyril can reply, the man has pulled a revolver from the waistline of his trousers. He swings it around for a moment, then aims it at Kyril with shaking hands.

 

“No more,” he says, and now his voice is more of a whine than a shout — a plea, a desperate man's violent attempt at negotiation.

 

There they stand. Kyril, with a gun in his face, placidly studying the baker — who looks to be on the edge of hysterical tears, who is trembling, who has been pushed to the his wits' ends.

 

 _That—that, I know something about,_ thinks Kyril. He knows this desperation: it is his own, reflected back at him in the eyes of a terrified stranger.

 

 _Do you owe me something?_ he wonders, but it is a moot question. The answer is obvious.

 

_Of course you don't._

 

“Put the gun down,” he instructs, without blinking.

 

His own pistol is holstered at his flank, safely tucked away. Kyril ponders — distractedly, like he is considering a purely hypothetical dilemma — if he could draw it before the man pulls the trigger.

 

“I don't want any trouble,” says the baker, and now he is crying, fat heavy tears spilling down his ruddy cheeks. “I'm so tired of trouble.”

 

Kyril smiles, a weak twitch of his lips; he takes a step closer. “Me too,” he says. “I'm tired of trouble, too.”

 

This is the point in the interaction, Kyril knows, where Snoke would have him disarm the man, then beat him to a bloody pulp.

 

 _Break his nose just to wake him up,_ Snoke has told him, time after time. _Then take the ears, just the lobe—he'll survive that, but it'll hurt like hell. Start breaking fingers after that, then toes. Break anything that won't kill him, and if he's still fighting back—break something that_ will _._

 

Kyril _knows_ how to do this, he knows how this goes. _This_ is what he's good at. This is the bloody skill he has wasted his life perfecting. He takes another step closer; now his body is flush with the counter and the barrel of the gun practically grazes the tip of his prominent nose.

 

 _This glorious future you think you have—you don't!_ she'd shouted, blinking furiously and so, _so_ beautiful in her rage, in her dolour, how he'd wanted to pull her into his arms even then, how similar the dark interior of the barrel of the gun is to that forest, the labyrinth of his dreams—

 

“Do it,” he suggests. “If you think you can.”

 

The baker doesn't pull the trigger; he is sobbing so heavily that Kyril doubts he can even see through his tears. Slowly, as one moves around a wild cornered animal, he raises his wrapped left hand and takes the gun from the man. He pockets it, then raises his hand again, keeping both aloft in an attempt to convey his good intentions.

 

The man has wet himself — he can see it behind the counter now, from this angle. A dark patch runs down the inseam of his right pant leg. Snot runs over his lips. In his fear and distress, an ugly grimace contorts his pudgy face.

 

“Maybe—maybe the world we grew up in,” says Kyril, softly, leisurely, as if he must check the taste of each word to ensure that the flavor is not too astringent, “maybe it did wrong by _both_ of us.”

 

“Fuck off,” sobs the baker.

 

Kyril nods. He'd probably say that too, if he were in the baker's position.

 

 _You deserve me. But not like this,_ she'd told him.

 

“Not like this,” Kyril repeats, shaking his head. “Not like this.”

 

This man's mouth twists with confusion, his tears have begun to ebb. He takes a deep shuddering breath, then shakes his own head back at Kyril.

 

“I don't understand,” he says, voice still wobbly.

 

“Me neither,” Kyril confesses, a sad little laugh bursting free from his throat. “Ha! I don't understand _anything_ , anymore.”

 

“You—” The baker is visibly alarmed by this strange turn of events, by the lack of brutal violence he was so clearly expecting.

 

“Me,” replies Kyril, laughing again. And then more deeply, then more deeply still, until he is bent almost in half over the counter, cackling. “Me!” he shouts deliriously, somewhere between glee and fury.

 

He glances up at the baker, whose alarm has shifted to fear. “Have you lost your mind?” the man blurts out, eyes wide.

 

“I have a lot of money,” Kyril states, in lieu of an honest answer. He's not sure the truth would be much of a comfort to the baker, nor that he'd have much sympathy for Kyril's plight. To clarify, he adds, “I'll cover your payments, from now on.”

 

“Why?” Puzzlement is splashed over the man's wide face, his eyes scanning Kyril's person for some hint of an explanation for this change of heart.

 

“Because I am a fool, who did not know he was a fool,” Kyril replies, straightening his full height, his composure recovered. “And _she_ told me I had a choice. I didn't get it then, but—well. Perhaps I'm starting to.”

 

He turns and leaves the man where he stands, wearing piss-soaked trousers and a confused frown.

 

Kyril collapses into his car, drives back to his building, takes the elevator up to his apartment, walks into the bathroom — his wingtip shoes clacking on the hard marble tile — then he studies himself in the mirror-covered wall.

 

“This is _not_ all you have left,” he says, laughing at his own funhouse features. Big nose, big ears, thick trunk of a neck upon which his head looks undersized, his solid boulder of a body obscured by his heavy coat and suit. “Your destiny has _not_ been decided. You owe them nothing. This is _not_ the only thing that matters.”

 

His reflection silently mouths the words back at him, in perfect synchronization.

 

He laughs, it laughs.

 

Together, they laugh and laugh.

 

. . .

 

In the middle of the night, under the cover of darkness, Kyril runs a few more errands. He doesn't worry whether the owners of all the establishments he visited today will tell Snoke that somehow, their money was miraculously returned to them; he imagines they won't, and if they do, he'll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

 

When he finally falls asleep, as the lavendar dawn is just beginning to break free from night's icy claws, he dreams that she is there with him, in his bed, permitting him to make sweet slow love to her, and whispering all the while that he _deserves_ her.

 

. . .

 

Walking home along Brighton Avenue one afternoon, having left Luke buried deep in his tax filings back at the gym, Rey notices, perhaps hyper-vigilant now after all that has passed, how much _Russian_ there is everywhere. Two restaurants across the street, a photocopy shop, the bodega on the corner, and a dozen other stores... they all bear Cyrillic signage.

 

She pauses in front of a pawn shop she's passed without consideration a hundred times before.

 

Today, she _is_ considering it. The sign on the door reads 'Pablo’s Pawn Shop' in English and underneath, presumably — she cannot understand the Cyrillic characters — it says the same in Russian. After a second spent studying the strange assortment of items displayed in their storefront widow, she nods to herself, and heads inside.

 

Glass-doored cases line two walls of the fluorescent lamp-lit shop, and the staggering collection of gold and silver jewelry housed within gleams under the glaring lights. Neon signs hang on the free wall space, between guitars and power tools. Much of the floor is impassable, due to the stacks of TV's, video game consoles, speakers, crates filled with vinyl albums, bicycles, kids’ toys.

 

“Hey,” says a bald, bug-eyed man standing behind one of the display counters, after Rey has stood gawking for a solid minute. “You looking to buy or sell?”

 

The place is like a museum of untold tragedies, each item representing some desperate soul's breaking point. Rey hates it.

 

“Buy,” she mutters. “A gun, um—a pistol. Something small.”

 

The man studies her, a skeptical look on his tanned face as his eyes follow a lascivious trail down her body. “Got a license to carry, honey?”

 

Rey shakes her head, still looking around. She hears a grunt, followed by a rustling of papers. “You can apply for one here. Should be able to get you taken care of in a few hours, a day at most. You got any model in mind?”

 

She shrugs, and steps up to the counter. “Something—small. Manageable, for me.”

 

“I know just the thing,” he says, turning and unlocking one of the cases. The revolver he sets on the glass counter between them is almost comically small, and Rey might be offended if she didn't like it so much. “Smith and Wesson LadySmith Sixty-Five, model sixty. Stainless steel, three inch barrel, five-round cylinder. Uses thirty-eight special bullets.”

 

 _It's almost cute,_ she marvels, as she picks it up and aims it at the far wall. “Hmm, light." She closes one eye as she peers through the fixed sight and takes aim at her target: the handle of a dangling power drill.

 

“Just about a pound and a half,” he says. “You know, sweetheart, I might be able to give you some kind of discount, maybe some lessons on how to shoot that thing, in exchange for a—”

 

“Just the gun,” Rey snaps without looking at him, her tone icy. She flicks the safety off and pulls the trigger, even though she knows it's not loaded; it gives a harmless little ‘click.’ “And the license, and the bullets. I'm not interested in _anything_ else.”

 

The man shrugs, cowed, and for the rest of the transaction, he keeps his gaze chastely averted.

 

. . .

 

A few days later, when Rey is forced to once again ride the Q into Manhattan so that she can pick up some more clothing, she runs a few errands.

 

Her first visit is to Planned Parenthood, an unassuming brick building down on Bleecker Street. The people there are kind, and professional, and no one judges her for the decisions she made in Russia. It's almost enough to bring her to tears once again, but she manages to keep her cool; with each passing hour that carries her farther away from the day she left him, this has become infinitesimally easier.

 

Her next stop is a nearby pharmacy, to fill the prescription for birth control that the gynecologist has written out for her, and to have the roll of film from her disposable camera developed.

 

The last is the public library. Normally she goes to her local branch, a converted chocolate factory on Mulberry Street in Soho, but today she feels like walking and she has time to kill while she waits for her photos, so she hikes up to the grandiose main branch on forty-second street.

 

Rey thinks it's a good day for it; the weather matches her mood: blustery and glum with billowing grey clouds that hang low in the sky. The tourists aren’t out in full force at this time of year — it's too long after the Christmas cheer has ebbed, but not close enough to the blooming verdancy of spring — and as she begins to climb the many steps towards the neoclassical columned entrance, she's grateful to find that there's no line of people waiting to go inside.

 

The sight of the twin marble lions that guard the entrance makes her feel happier than she has in days. They're nicknamed Patience and Fortitude, a fact she knows after years of visiting the stately marble-hewn library whenever her spirits were low. Giving them a jaunty little salute, she makes her way through the heavy bronzed steel doors, then onwards into the Rose Main Reading Room.

 

It's an airy, cavernous hall, filled by two rows of long, heavy oak tables. Each table is lit by small brass reading lamps, and peopled by the inexhaustibly diverse populace of New York. No matter where they come from, or where they're going, the library is a place for all of them to stay a while, sit somewhere warm or cool in the twin torments of winter or summer, and lose themselves in the joy of reading.

 

The dull afternoon light tumbles in from massive windows, illuminating the mural covered ceiling and the two floors worth of library stacks that line the lengthwise walls. Rey drifts towards one of the iron spiral staircases; up on the balconied second floor, she begins to wander from stack to stack.

 

There is a droning murmur from the tables down below, like the buzzing of an industrious beehive; accented by the occasional barking squeak of a heavy chair on the hard marble floor, these sounds echo up and around, bouncing off the stone walls. The air smells like old vellum, like wood polish, like the coffee that students and tourists and researchers alike all bring into the library with them. She loves this place, this institution that has been a touchstone for Rey during her wild years, her lonely years, all the intervening years both good and bad.

 

Eventually, Rey stumbles upon the world folklore section. Here she lingers a while, plucking the odd book from the shelf and thumbing through its pages.

 

And then — she sees it.

 

 _An Anthology of Russian Folk Epics._ Gingerly, as though it might bite her, she pulls the book out and opens to a random page. She begins to read:

   


> _Dobrynya Nikitich was talking to his mother:_  
>  _'My darling lady, my dear mother,_  
>  _The honorable widow Ofimya Alexandrovna,_  
>  _Why did you bear me, unhappy Dobrynya?_  
>  _My lady, my dear mother, you should have born me_  
>  _As a white grieving stone,_  
>  _My lady, my dear mother, you should have wrapped me_  
>  _In a white sleeve, a sleeve of fine linen,_  
>  _And my lady, my dear mother, you should have lifted me,_  
>  _Up on the high mountain, up on the Saracen Mountain,_  
>  _And my lady, my dear mother, you should have lowered me_  
>  _Into the Black Sea, into the Turkish Sea._  
>  _I, Dobrynya, would have lain there in the sea forever,_  
>  _I would have lain there forever,_  
>  _I, Dobrynya, wouldn't have ridden through the open field,_  
>  _I, Dobrynya, wouldn't have killed innocent souls,_  
>  _I wouldn't have spilled blood in vain,_  
>  _I, Dobrynya, wouldn't have made fathers and mothers cry,_  
>  _I, Dobrynya, wouldn't have made young wives widows,_  
>  _I wouldn't have made young children orphans.’_

 

Rey slams the book shut, clenching it so tightly in her hand that her knuckles go white and begin to ache. She lowers her head until it rests against the cool oaken edge of the bookshelf, pulling in jagged, hitched breaths. Letting her eyes slip shut, she remembers—

 

They are lying together on an old sofa, worn out from sex and steam and the difficult emotional journey they have taken that day. His chest is hard beneath her cheek, rising and falling in that steady way of his, and Kyril — oh, but she had to close her eyes, so she could luxuriate inside the rich, deep timbre of his voice — he is telling her a story.

 

He is telling her _this_ story, the one written down on the page of the book in her hand.

 

He never told her this part though, did he?

 

So many things he left unsaid, in those fleeting days they had together. But then, Rey is guilty of the same sin.

 

_Are you Dobrynya, Kyril? Have I condemned you to this, by kicking you and leaving you and telling your mother not to give up on you and rubbing all my salt in all your wounds?_

_Have I done wrong by you?_

_No,_ Rey tells herself. _No._ She walks over to the edge of the balcony, peers down at the sea of readers. She counts down from ten, trying to staunch the flow of guilt, trying to find her footing after what she's just read.

 

_I did the right thing. I did right by him. I did what I had to do._

 

 _Then why does it hurt like this?_ she wonders, blinking as the clouds part and a ray of light beams directly in her eyes. _Why does it hurt worse than everything else that's come before?_

 

Rey has no answer, so she checks the heavy book out of the library, despite how deeply that one short passage has rattled her.

 

 _Maybe there are answers in here,_ she thinks, as she tucks the tome into her canvas backpack. _Maybe it will help me understand him._

 

Later, when she returns to the pharmacy to pick up her photos, she thanks the teen working behind the counter and shoves the neat little envelope in her backpack, inside the book.

 

In the days that follow, she never opens the book and she never looks at the photos. But she never takes them out of her backpack, either. Where she goes, they go. They are her constant, secret companions.

 

Their mere presence is a source of solace for her. And while Rey finds Kyril's actions difficult to understand, her own reasoning for these new totems proves even more opaque. Perhaps by her own design.

 

. . .

 

On the eve of his departure, Kyril is drinking a beer on his balcony. He leans out over the balustrade, gazing at the quiet street down below. A few bundled up souls hurriedly make their way along the sidewalk, undoubtedly rushing home from work, eager to return to the comfort of their warm apartments.

 

Moscow is quiet, still frozen by the late January chill. The sky is set ablaze in sweeping strokes of tangerine and coral. The whole world feels to Kyril, at this moment, like a glittering icicle lit up by flickering firelight.

 

Cold, brilliant, beautiful. Elemental. And what's this he's feeling?

 

Hope. Oh, how Kyril hopes.

 

He hopes he will find the strength to do what he must be done in New York City. He hopes he will not falter next time, when the moment comes to choose his path. He hopes he will see _her_ , and that she will speak with him if he does. He hopes Mitaka will know peace, and purpose, and belonging, in the mountains of Chechnya.

 

He hopes he finds Luke before Snoke does.

 

He hopes that _when_ he finds Luke, his uncle will help him, even after all these years. Even after all that has passed.

 

He hopes that, for once in his God forsaken life, the _right_ choice will be easier than the wrong. He hopes that it will cost him less than all his mistakes have.

 

Faintly, as though from many miles away, he hears a telephone ringing. It's his, he realizes, after a few rings. He rushes inside, pulling off his ushanka and gloves before yanking the phone off the hook.

 

“Hello?” he says, voice gravelly from disuse.

 

“Veniamin?” A reedy voice, husky with age and cigars and whiskey, but still unapologetically cultured, almost regal. Kyril cannot breathe, he cannot respond, he cannot think. _How can this be? This cannot be. Can it be?_

 

“Veniamin, are you there? It's your mother. Say something, boy, if you're there.”

 

“Mamushka,” gasps Kyril. That's all he can get out before his throat constricts, and the tears begin to flow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, let's get into it! Only one translation this time around:
> 
> "Marşa ġoyla." **Good luck.**
> 
> Name meanings!  
> The name [Csenge](https://www.behindthename.com/name/csenge) derives from a similar word meaning "to ring, to clang" in Hungarian, almost like a wake-up call...
> 
> The inspiration for [Pablo's Pawn Shop](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pablo%27s_Pawnshop) and [Tatooine](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tatooine) Boxing and Fitness! ;)
> 
> Links!  
> What is the [height](https://www.boxingscene.com/forums/showthread.php?t=226266) and [weight](https://www.britannica.com/sports/boxing/Weight-divisions) of a man who boxes in the welterweight division?
> 
> How does one become an FBI [informant](http://theconversation.com/informants-arent-spies-theyre-essential-fbi-tools-97200)?
> 
> Finn does Tai chi. What's [that](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai_chi)?
> 
> What's [NPR](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR)?
> 
> What's a [VHS](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS) and/or [Blockbuster](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_LLC)? (LOL)
> 
> What's [Seinfeld](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld) and what's the deal with the [puffy shirt](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puffy_Shirt)?
> 
> What's a [barcalounger](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcalounger)?
> 
> A photo gallery of [telephones through the ages](https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-evolution-of-telephones/33/). XD
> 
> Okay, let's talk about the [Chechen Republic of Ichkeria](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechen_Republic_of_Ichkeria). This is a really clear, helpful [video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wX-xs9VJ-BI) about the [First Chechen-Russian War](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War). (There were two during the 1990's.)
> 
> It was really important to me that I portray the brewing [conflict](https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/chechnya-conflict/), Mitaka's moral reasoning and his [religion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunni_Islam) sensitively. I hope that comes across!
> 
> More about Chechen [culture](http://www.everyculture.com/wc/Norway-to-Russia/Chechens.html), [language](https://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/chechen.php), and the mass [deportations](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Chechens_and_Ingush) of 1944.
> 
> What's the [Red Square](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Square)? The [Moscow Kremlin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Kremlin)? [Saint Basil's Cathedral](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral)? The [Bolshoi Theater](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshoi_Theatre)?
> 
> What's a [chesterfield chair](https://www.amazon.com/slp/chesterfield-chair/rp9f4ypn5oqmdhr)?
> 
> Why is Kyril [taking money from businesses](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion)?
> 
> What's [shashlik](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shashlik)? [Russian honey cake](https://russianfoods.com/en/medovik-russian-honey-cake/)? [Khachapuri](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khachapuri)? [Kolach](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolach)? [Baklava](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baklava)?
> 
> More info: [NYC Planned Parenthood](https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-new-york-city/who-we-are/our-history).
> 
> The [Mulberry Street](https://www.nypl.org/about/locations/mulberry-street) and [42nd Street](https://www.nypl.org/about/locations/schwarzman/facts) NYPL branches.
> 
> How to _actually_ [buy a gun](https://m.wikihow.com/Buy-a-Gun-in-New-York-City) in NYC. (It's a LOT harder in real life, thankfully, than it is in fanfic.)
> 
> What's a [LadySmith 65](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_%26_Wesson_Model_60)?
> 
> Want to read more from _[Anthology of Russian Folk Epics](https://www.amazon.com/Anthology-Russian-Folklores-Cultures-Eastern/dp/0873326415)_?
> 
> Okay, that's all from me! Again, if you liked this chapter, maybe leave some love? This writer would greatly appreciate it! ❤


	9. место, где мы спасены

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the place where we are saved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Here we are, at the penultimate chapter. (The last chapter will be an epilogue.)
> 
> Let me say this right off the bat: **this one is _VIOLENT_**. There's just no getting around that. This is a story about the Russian Mafia, and sadly it's not all Corgis and cheese plates when it comes to organized crime. (Although watch this space, because that may very well be the basis of my next fic.) I cannot really warn readers about the violence featured below without major spoilers, so if you are concerned that you might be about to read something potentially triggering or even just upsetting, **please click on the link that takes you to the end notes, where I have included a list of what you can expect to read at the bottom**. I tried to describe everything in enough detail to convey the fear and horror of the characters, but not so much as to be gory or sickening. I hope this helps everyone safely enjoy, and if there's something you feel I've missed or if you have any questions, please feel free to come talk to me on [Tumblr](https://voicedimplosives.tumblr.com)!  
>   
> 
> Otherwise: ***THANK YOU*** to my beta, the magnificent [Kachenka](https://luminousreylo.tumblr.com) who, due to my neuroses and re-writing half of this beast, beta'd this thing not once, but TWICE. ❤️❤️ And thank you to [Vee](https://arroways.tumblr.com) who has been my cheerleader ever since I timidly stepped foot in this fandom and continues to not only read my rough drafts but says nice things about them and always has incredible suggestions. We can all thank her for suggesting Rey use some sick Krav Maga moves in this chapter, and they are dedicated to her! ❤️
> 
>  
> 
> And, of course, thank YOU, readers. Thank you for reading or commenting or leaving kudos or reblogging or rec'ing or engaging in any way that you do. Seriously. I appreciate it all. You make this endeavor fun, and worthwhile, and so so SO incredibly encouraging for this wanna-be writer. Спасибо. Я люблю всех вас. ❤️

**_Before I say what I have to say, which you are going to listen to without interruption—that_ is _a condition of this call—I want you to know that the primary reason I am even on the phone with you is because of the remarkable young woman you helped, Irena Imyarek._ **

 

Kyril bounces up onto the balls of his feet, shoves his gloved hands deeper into the pockets of his thick wool coat. Still, a shiver passes through his frame — he and six other Vori have been standing out on the tarmac waiting for Snoke for well over an hour.

 

 _We could've done this inside the plane,_ Kyril thinks bitterly, sparing a glance back at the private Gulfstream jet that sits behind them — also waiting.

 

But no. Ivan Ivanovich Snoke never, ever misses an opportunity to remind his subordinates of their place. Accordingly, he has specifically instructed that they wait outside the plane for him.

 

**_Her account of your time together, which I am sure I don't need to repeat for you, convinced me that you might still have a soul—that you might still be my son._ **

 

Kyril takes in the other Vori standing around — tall, hulking men, equally if not more tattooed than him although the evidence of their status is, like his own, hidden beneath their bulky winter wear. They all have wide, unsmiling faces, with piercing Slavic eyes and high Slavic cheekbones. His brethren, supposedly.

 

 _**So let me say this: I do not, I cannot, and I probably will not ever forgive you for killing your father. I loved him very much Ben, even if our marriage was not a success, and he did**_ **not** _**betray you.** _

 

Finally, a gleaming black town car rolls past some checkpoint beside the small airport. It inches its way forward across the icy stretch of concrete between the hangars and the runway. Kyril glances down at his suitcase, in which the files he has stolen this morning now reside.

 

_**He was trying to save you.** _

 

When the car — a brand new BMW, Kyril observes dispassionately — pulls to a stop, it idles for another infuriating minute. In his pockets, Kyril's leather gloves creak from how tightly he clenches his fists.

 

_**But you are my son. I brought you into this world, and then because of my preoccupation with espionage and the looming threat of nuclear war, because of the decades of messiness in this country, I left you to face its horrors by yourself.** _

 

One of the passenger doors opens. Snoke steps out first, Hux follows. _Why did they ride here together, without me, when I'm supposed to be guarding him?_ he thinks, hackles raised, then wills his paranoid mind to be still. _Doesn't matter. Stay calm. The plan requires calm._

 

Snoke's eyes light up at the sight of the men's slightly blue-tinted lips, the shambling dance they have adopted to keep warm.

 

“Well, boys? A little fresh air is good for you, keeps the mind sharp. Now, ready to conquer the degenerate capitalists?” he asks, smirking.

 

“Wasn't it you who told me that _we’re_ one of them now?” Kyril bites out. He can't help it; he's freezing, he's pretty sure his balls have climbed back up inside his body, he can't even feel his toes anymore. They could be frostbitten, blackened and rotting for all he knows.

 

Snoke laughs — a raptorial chortle, a mockery of real mirth.

 

_**When you turned eighteen, I told you that you were an adult, fully responsible in the legal and moral sense for every one of your mistakes from then on.** _

__

_**As I am responsible, for mine. As was your father, for his.** _

 

They climb up the airstair into the luxurious jet. The pilots are drinking coffee in the cockpit, and they nod respectfully at the men coming aboard — first to the Krestniy Otets, then to each Vor in turn. Kyril is last to board; he returns their nod before shifting to study the cabin.

 

There are eight camel-colored leather seats, arranged around two glossy ebony tables to either side of a narrow aisle. Towards the back of the space stands a bar, fully equipped with a dizzying array of liquors and zakuski, Russian drinking snacks.

 

Snoke, of course, chooses his seat first — next to the window on the left, although he immediately closes its blind. The men don't speak as they follow suit. They are not friends, and there is no business that needs discussing at the moment. Outside the small porthole windows that line the curved fuselage of the plane, the weak winter sun slips towards the horizon. Only a light coral blush in the clouds indicates that night is coming.

 

Kyril chooses a window seat on the opposite side of the plane, as far as possible from his supposed mentor. Raising an eyebrow at this, lips twisted into a peevish moue, Snoke says nothing — merely turns to Hux and resumes their quiet conversation. Kyril stows his suitcase, carrying his clandestine cargo, beneath his seat.

 

The attendant, a pale willowy woman, closes and locks the door, calling back to them that they should fasten their seatbelts.

 

None of them do.

 

**_You threw my mistakes in my face, Ben. Again and again._ **

 

There is something Kyril has never told his fellow Bratva, a somewhat embarrassing secret that plagues him as the plane taxis towards the runway, then turns and begins to pick up speed—

 

He has never flown before, and he is terrified. His palms are sweating. His feet, too. Everything inside is twisted up — by nerves, by longing, by anticipation, he doesn't know. There is too much swirling around for Kyril to possibly pinpoint the origin of his malaise.

 

He watches the forest around the little airport race past, and then with a nauseating jolt, they are up, up, up — the plane tilted at a terrifying angle, the speed and rapid change in elevation pinning Kyril's heaving stomach to his spine, his tense body to his seat.

 

_**By dropping out of school, by taking up with those thugs and their ghastly ringleader, by polluting your skin with those vile images—** _

 

The other Vori, it would seem, are unphased. Two have already fallen asleep, were out before they even began to ascend. Another sips at a vodka tonic he prepared for himself before they even began to taxi.

 

The ones seated at the table with Hux and Snoke — brawny, ambitious men named Ermolai Yermolayevich Pasternak and Timur Timurovich Zima — are listening intently. Kyril tries to focus on their voices for a moment, but it is only a discussion of logistics for the assemblage with the Brighton Beach Solntsevskaya, logistics they have already reviewed at length, and it does not hold his interest.

 

**_By taking the fall for them, by learning to steal and learning to lie for them, by killing for them—_ **

 

The forest is far below them now; he cannot distinguish the trees from one another. It is an endless rime-laced blur of evergreen and ivory, interrupted periodically by a lone snaking highway or a bloom of silver roofs, small villages just visible beneath their snowy bedding.

 

**_By killing Han,_ she'd said. There _—_ there his mother's voice had cracked, and his wretched heart along with it. _I couldn't escape my mistakes, whenever I thought about you, the ways I failed as a mother. I still can't._**

 

**And Kyril, he had lamented: _It would have been better—your life—if I'd never been born. You would've been happy. Both of you._**

_**I'm not going to dignify that with a response, nor am I going speculate on what-if's or what-might-have-been’s.** _

 

They have passed through the troposphere; now they soar on an even keel, high above the tousled cumulus clouds whose peaks stretch towards the royal blue stratosphere like mountains, both diaphanous and imposing.

 

It is like nothing Kyril has ever seen. For a long time he stares out at the drifting, towering scenery, until the glowing sun drops below and they fall into shadow. Only then does he feel his unease begin to relent.

 

**_What has passed—has passed._ **

 

 _**But if I were to speculate, I might ask you—if you had the chance to do it all again, would you change it?**_ **h** **is mother had asked of him. Kyril had wanted very much to lie, to say that of course he would not choose this corrupted, twisting path. Even he — fool that he is — knows better than that. And yet—**

__

_**I wouldn't have met her,** _ **he'd muttered.** _**If I changed it.** _

__

**She'd laughed cheerlessly at that.** _**No. You wouldn't have. Do you remember, Ben, when I came to visit you in prison on that birthday? You asked me if I still loved you, do you remember what I told you?** _

__

_**Yes,** _ **he'd replied.** _**You said you loved me—but that love couldn't save me.** _

 

He sees Hux stealing sidelong glances at him, whispering something in Snoke's ear, and suddenly — Kyril feels very, very tired. He lets his eyes drift back towards the window, where glittering stars have begun to blink themselves into existence across the velvety black mantle overhead.

 

**_That was wrong of me. I was mistaken. Benjamin, love is the only thing that_ can _save you._ **

 

**He'd laughed, too. _I don't think she'll have me. Not now, not how I am._**

 

 _**First of all,** _ **Leia had scoffed,** _**did I not tell you that the reason I am calling** _ **you** _**is because she called** _ **me** _**? Do you think this is the action of a woman who doesn't care?** _

__

**He'd been about to offer up some throwaway denial when she'd added:** _**Don't answer that, by the way. It's a rhetorical question.** _

__

**He'd grinned, despite himself. The dry crack of sarcasm in Leia's voice — for a single, beautiful second, he had been a little boy again, his mother snapping off loving reproaches when he misbehaved, or teasing him out of his sullen moods.**

__

_**Furthermore,** _ **his mother had continued,** _**it's irrelevant whether she loves you, because I am not referring to Rey or her feelings towards you.** _

__

_**Nor am I referring to my own.** _

__

**At that, Kyril had pressed:** _**Whose love can save me, then, mamushka?** _

__

_**Yours, Ben. You must find the will to love yourself, respect yourself, and save your self.** _

__

_**No one can do that for you.** _

 

 _**Now,** _ **she'd gone on to say, when Kyril could not seem to articulate a response,** _**I am going to give you Luke's address, and you are going to go to him. When you see him, you are going to follow my directions to the letter.** _

 

_**Are you listening to me? Do you understand?** _

__

**He'd blinked hard, putting down the beer he'd been drinking before she called and seating himself at his kitchen table.**

__

_**Yes, mamushka,** _ **he'd rasped.** _**I'm listening. I understand.** _

__

_**Good. And Ben?** _

__

_**Yes?** _

__

_**I may never forgive you. But—you are my blood, my creation, my baby. My love for you is not the same love I felt the first time I held you in my arms, or the love I felt the day we said goodbye to you and put you on the train for Germany. Nor is it the love I felt when I saw you, head shaved and full of hate, on that birthday, the last day of your childhood.** _

__

_**I will never love you like that again. And the love I have for you now—it cannot save you.** _

__

_**But you** _ **are** _**still loved.** _

 

Kyril peers into the darkness, attempts to identify the constellations. He can just make out Corona Borealis, the crown belonging Ariadne, goddess of the labyrinth, who led Theseus out of that dark rock-hewn maze where the Minotaur dwelt. It hovers alongside a dozen more age-old stories, forged by man to give meaning to the night sky.

 

 _I have a mother who loves me_ , he reminds himself. Him. Kyril Ren, the man with no patronym, prodigal son of no one. And perhaps — there is a chance — Rey loves him too.

 

He closes his eyes, allows his mind to spiral out into emptiness — and finds neither torment nor absolution in his nebulous dreams.

 

Just quiet.

 

. . .

 

“Hmm. Nine letter word, the first is ‘p’ and the last two are ‘c’ ‘e’. The clue is, ‘Atonement for sins.’ What do you think?” Luke asks, looking up from the New York Times crossword puzzle. He’s reclined in his barcalounger, dressed in shabby sweat pants and a thick wool sweater.

 

“I don’t know,” yawns Rey, stretching her arms. “Peace? Providence?”

 

“Five and ten letters, those are no good,” he says, shaking his head.

 

Rey scoffs, her attention drifting back to the TV, where an old black and white movie is playing, and then, as per usual, she feels her eyes being pulled towards the bay window. All is quiet, the street outside is empty, and yet — she has a terrible sense of foreboding. She hates how quiet it is, wishes a car would pass or someone would walk by.

 

In her peripheral vision she spies her backpack, which she tossed on the floor when she and Luke returned home from the gym a few hours ago. Hazarding a quick peek at Luke, Rey ensures he’s completely absorbed in his puzzle before silently stretching her leg out, looping one of the straps around her foot, and dragging the bag closer.

 

Opening it, she reaches in and pulls out the book and the photos within. If Luke were to call attention to what she’s doing right now, if he were to ask her why she’s been behaving like this cargo she lugs around is illicit contraband that must be hidden — or why she’s trying now to retrieve the items so surreptitiously — she doubts she’d have a very good explanation. It’s been days since she checked the book out and picked up the pictures, but she’s yet to look at either of them. She just hasn’t felt… ready.

 

 _Am I really any more prepared now to look at these, to remember him?_   she asks herself.

 

 _You are,_ whispers her broken heart. _You must be._

 

She withdraws the envelope from the book. The first photo in the stack, when she takes them out, is a terribly lit shot of her hotel room in Moscow. She scoffs again at the next photo: a hasty snap of her shitty rental car, the orange Moskvitch 412, half-buried in the snow that fell during her first night in Russia. Idly, she wonders if it’s still sitting on the side of the M8 highway.

 

“Something funny? What’ve you got there?” questions Luke. She looks up at him — he’s smiling at her with raised eyebrows, curious. “Taking up a new hobby?”

 

“Oh,” she says, “These. I bought a little disposable camera before I left for Russia. I haven't—gotten a chance, to uh, look at the pictures yet. But, well—”

 

“I think I understand,” Luke says, his smile turning wistful.

 

Rey nods, then looks back down at the photos. The next one steals her breath away, and her eyes begin to burn, her throat aching, before she can shuffle it to the back of the stack.

 

Her and Kyril, their faces dewy with perspiration. The photo cuts off at Rey’s sternum, Kyril’s collarbones — much of the background is taken up by the window behind the dacha’s couch, through which a gloriously sunny day can be seen.

 

“Rey?”

 

“Oh, I—” she tries, but falters.

 

She stares at the photo like a starved castaway looks to the sea, uselessly wishing that drinking the water was not a death sentence. He looks so _beautiful_ to her — his dark hair is unkempt, mussed by her wandering fingers. A bead of sweat is visible at his temple, and his eyes are wide with surprise at the kiss she is pressing against his scarred cheek. One of his arms has snaked itself around her body; his big hand rests against her chest, fingers splayed in a possessive hold.

 

He looks so content, so handsome, so completely satisfied — his eyes are the color of burnt caramel, soft and slightly squinted from the warm smile opening up his face — it makes her stomach cramp, makes her think crazy, impossible thoughts.

 

“Huh,” Luke says, from behind her shoulder. “That’s a nasty scar—he didn’t have that when I saw him way back in Berlin. What happened?”

 

Rey quickly overturns the photos, looking up at Luke guiltily.

 

“It’s—I know, Rey. That you two were probably—well. I kinda put the pieces together,” he says, still wearing that rueful smile. “I’m not a spring chicken, y’know.”

 

“It’s private,” she blurts out, a wild flush burning up her cheeks and ears.

 

“Okay, kiddo,” he says, shrugging. “But—the scar?”

 

“In prison. From a member of a rival gang.”

 

“Hmph.” Luke settles himself back in the barcalounger. He fixes her with a long, pointed stare, which Rey attempts to return as guilelessly as she can. But the moment drags on and on, and eventually she yields, ducking her head and blinking down at her hands.

 

She turns the stack over, and shuffles past the photo of her and Kyril. The next one is equally painful — their little dacha.

 

 _Will I ever be happy like that again?_ she wonders, studying its cheery red sides, its bright white window frames, the steep snowy slope of its roof, the intricate carvings on its vergeboards, the banya — _their_ banya — just visible behind the little house.

 

She has no answer, so she continues through the pile: Kira and her family, an awkwardly posed hug with the woman in Vologda, a sneaky candid taken of Luke while he was preparing a pot of borscht, a couple random and careless shots from around the city to finish out the roll of film.

 

Rey returns to the photo of her and Kyril, unable to resist staring at it now that she has finally given in.

 

“Y’know,” Luke says, without looking up from his crossword puzzle. “He was a moody teenager. Brooding. Very serious, all the time—he was like that as a kid, too, sweet but serious, although it got worse when he hit puberty. That photo—”

 

“I don't—” she tries to protests.

 

“Sure, sure,” he cuts in, waving his hand dismissively, “Anyway, that photo of you two—I think it’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him look. Even with that godawful scar.”

 

“I’m gonna go put on some pajamas,” she replies, needing this conversation to be over. “Let’s play some cards, after? Gin rummy?”

 

Luke nods. “If you think you can handle it.”

 

“I’ll wipe the floor with you, old man,” Rey jokes, already up and on her way out of the TV den. Only faintly does she hear Luke cry out, she climbs the stairs:

 

“Aha! _Penitence!_ ”

 

. . .

 

They arrive at LaGuardia around six p.m., landing and parking at one of the terminals designated for private jets. The security process is painless, since they all have perfectly prepared documents, and before Kyril knows it, they’re piling into a limousine headed for Brooklyn.

 

He pours himself a finger of vodka from the limo’s mini-bar, an indulgence he’d denied himself during the long flight. The drink, which he swallows in one gulp, helps to calm his raging nerves, the vehement misgivings that prick the back of his mind every time he looks over at Hux and Snoke. They seem to have spent most of the flight in a conspiratorial session; even now, they speak in undertones to each other.

 

The limo pulls to a stop in front of a gaudy, soaring apartment building right on the beach. The men clamber out, and are greeted by a wall of unsmiling, tattooed Russians. Their hosts stand in a line on the sidewalk, hands clasped respectfully in front of them, and each man in turn offers a small bow, just the forward canting of his head and shoulders.

 

“Mister Ivan Ivanovich Snoke, mighty Vori—esteemed guests,” growls one of the men, in deep tar-roughened Russian. “Welcome to Little Odessa. Your arrival has been eagerly anticipated by Mister Palpatine Ivanovich Diomedes; he has prepared a banquet in your honor. He is waiting for you inside his condominium, if you will follow me.”

 

Snoke tilts his head, lip curled, studying the brawny man for a moment, then glances back at the Vori, who all warily look to him for the go-ahead.

 

He lets the suspense build, simply standing beside the limo with his amused smirk as he takes in their surroundings, a manicured street lined by buildings as tall and ostentatious as the one before them. Patches of half-melted snow glow under the glaring orange street lamps. From somewhere beyond the condominiums, the ocean roars; there is a faint, familiar scent on the bitter nighttime wind — cigarettes, frying dough, gasoline — traces of home, of Russia.

 

Finally, Snoke’s smirk breaks into something closer to a real smile, and he chuckles.

 

“Yes,” he says, also in Russian, as the Krestniy Otets speaks no other language. “Good. Let us go inside.”

 

And like that, the meeting between the Russian and New York branches of the Solntsevskaya Bratva has begun.

 

. . .

 

Diomedes lives in a condominium on the sixteenth floor, overlooking the inky, writhing sea. His apartment is the height of eighties extravagance: sunken floors with wall-to-wall shag carpeting, plush dyed leather couches, everything angular and impractical. Eye-catching accents of vermilion red offset the black, white and chrome color scheme — like drops of blood dripped across a snowy evening.

 

Immaculate. Cold. Barren. It is so pristinely neat that Kyril imagines he could be forgiven for assuming this is the first time humans have ever set foot inside.

 

The Brighton Beach Vori quietly joke with one another in a somewhat nonsensical Russian-English pidgin language as they all gather in the uncomfortably furnished sitting room, which earns dark looks from Hux and Snoke. 

 

“What are they saying?” Snoke growls, to his Vori. The other men shrug, sharing nervous glances.

 

“They're deciding what food to order,” Kyril responds — dutifully, honestly. Snoke huffs in disgust.

 

“Tell your men,” says Snoke, to Diomedes, who holds court in a large armchair at the far end of the room, “that we are _Russian_ , and while I am here—we shall speak _only_ Russian.”

 

“Of course. You'll have to excuse them—they're simply trying to assimilate in our new home.” Diomedes gives an obsequious smile and nod, and turns to his men. “You heard him—no English.”

 

“A little assimilation goes a long way,” Snoke sniffs. “Now tell me, Palpatine Ivanovich Diomedes, how is your family?”

 

Hux offers no comment on this exchange, just nods his agreement with Snoke and glares at the Brooklynites, who roll their eyes when Snoke's back is turned.

 

Kyril, when he believes that no one is looking, allows himself a soft chuckle. He is the only Muscovite member of the Solntsevskaya Bratva who speaks English, and it is obvious by the droll smiles Diomedes and the New Yorkers wear that they are less than impressed by this fact.

 

 _Off to a rocky start_ , he thinks happily, praying that the tension between the factions will keep Hux and Snoke distracted.

 

. . .

 

Hours later, after much alcohol and food has been consumed and business has been discussed for hours in lofty, braggadocious tones, the men are shown to their bedrooms within the sprawling, three-story condominium.

 

“I need some air,” Kyril mutters to Snoke, and tries not to flinch at the knowing leer the Krestniy Otets gives him in return. He adds, “The smoke and vodka’s gone to my head.”

 

“Of course,” says Snoke, nodding agreeably. “Take a walk. See the sights. The night is young, and it _is_ your first time in America, after all.”

 

“Right.” There doesn't seem to be, in Kyril’s opinion, any more that must be said, so he retrieves the purloined documents from his suitcase, hides them inside his coat, and heads out.

 

He can’t see the ocean clearly in the moonless night, but he can hear the incessant whoosh and shurr of the waves breaking against the beach; the whining seaside winds burn his cheeks. As he passes along the sidewalk towards the sounds of a more commercial part of the neighborhood, he marvels at how different the winter of New York is to that of Moscow. He finds this whipping ocean air, this cold here in New York, not to be as brutal as Moscow’s deep freeze. And both cities’ wintry climes are different from the cold he felt sitting in that darkening taiga forest, coming to terms with Rey's rejection. The cold he feels now, though — it’s warmer, somehow — milder, with a different smell.

 

Salt. Sand. McDonald's. The stench of burned rubber from the elevated subway cars braking as they enter their stations, overhead. And under all of that — the more familiar aromas.

 

A trace of the old world, embedded in the new one. That is what this deserted road smells like to Kyril, as he walks.

 

Two more blocks, and he finds himself at a busy intersection, where the little one-way residential road he’s been following meets a busier one. Brighton Avenue, reads the sign that hangs from the stoplight. A market sits on the corner, light spilling out onto the icy sidewalk. Kyril enters, kicking his shoes against the mat inside the door. An old woman sitting behind the front counter looks up when he does, and offers him an uninterested nod before returning to the knitting in her hands.

 

“Excuse me,” Kyril says, pulling off his hat and his gloves because the oppressive heating inside the shop has immediately made his hands and scalp begin to perspire. “I need some directions.”

 

“Hmm?” She finishes her stitch before she looks up, and when she does, her eyes land on Kyril’s bare, tattooed hands. “Oh. You’re one of _them_ ,” she spits out in Brooklyn-tinted Russian, her eyes narrowing. “I haven’t seen you around before.”

 

“I—I’m from Moscow. I only just arrived,” he mutters, switching to Russian as well. He has the strangest reaction to her harsh gaze; heat begins to crawl up his neck, and he’s certain his features have turned a bright red.

 

“Just what we need, more of _you_ coming here,” she says. “You’re a strapping, handsome young man, except for that scar. Such a shame, that you’ve chosen to be one of the bad ones.”

 

“Yes,” he coughs, both offended and in awe of this old woman’s brazen indifference to his status. “It is. But I’m trying not to be. In fact—that’s why I need directions. Will you help me?”

 

“I suppose,” she sighs. “But you should buy something, in return. Fair is fair.”

 

Kyril offers her a tight smile and a polite nod. “Alright. A pack of Marlboro Reds, and directions to Van Sicklen Street, please.”

 

. . .

 

She’s upstairs in her bedroom pulling on pajama pants and planning her strategy for gin rummy when there is a knock at the front door. Rey goes completely still, hearing nothing for a terrible caesura but the wild drumming of her heart, her pulse rushing in her ears, and then — Luke’s slippered shuffle. It opens, there’s an exchange of male voices, not loud or angry but not exactly pleasant or cordial either, and then the door closes.

 

She checks the bedside alarm clock: it's just after midnight.

 

Two sets of footsteps tread deeper into the house, and she thinks she hears them stop at the kitchen. The voices begin to speak again, a low hurried conversation whose words she cannot distinguish.

 

Rey pulls in a deep breath, realizing with a dizzying rush that she hasn’t breathed since she first heard the knock. She reaches into the bottom drawer of her dresser, under a pile of sweaters, digging around until her hand lands on cold, hard metal. Then, after checking that it’s loaded and the safety is on, she tucks the LadySmith pistol into the waistband of her pajamas and pulls on an old baggy t-shirt to obscure the odd lump it creates.

 

She takes another deep, bracing breath. Then two more. She isn’t completely confident she knows who’s downstairs, but the rich, rumbling timbre of his voice, the rolling thunder of his muffed words... in her heart, Rey knows who she both wants it to be and fears that it is.

 

With one final breath pulled in and held, she slowly slinks down the stairs, trying to avoid the creakiest spots, trying for absolute cat-like silence. It’s a futile endeavor, because both men seem to be waiting for her. They turn to watch her descend the last few stairs and enter the kitchen, and then—

 

And then, oh, and _then_ —

 

Kyril is in Luke’s kitchen, towering a full head above his uncle and seemingly taking up all the air, if Rey's sudden inability to breathe properly is anything to go by. He gapes at her, mouth hanging open, and now Rey _is_ certain of something — that his expression mirrors her own. She cannot speak, she is pulling in tight short breaths, willing herself not to fall over from the rush of blood to her head. Is she blushing, under his gaze? She thinks she might be. Her face feels very warm.

 

It's just that he looks so _good_. Kyril, her Kyril, her man — hair a little longer, dark scruff growing in along his chin, and the lavender shadows beneath his eyes a little more pronounced. But still, Rey thinks, he looks like he's _hers_ , all hers, and he’s standing in Luke’s kitchen, because—

 

Rey snaps out of her daze when she remembers that — why he has come. In an instant, the gun is in her hands and pointed at Kyril’s shocked face.

 

“Get away from him,” she says, as steady as she can. Her voice quivers anyway. Her lips do too.

 

 _Do not cry,_ she tells herself. _Don’t you_ dare _cry._

 

He shakes his head and raises his hands in surrender, one holding a thick Manila envelope, and that’s strange, isn't it? That’s not what she expected, but she’s so _afraid_ , she’s spent the last two weeks preparing herself for this moment... so she flicks the safety off and says, hushed, “I won’t let you kill him.”

 

“Irenushka,” he breathes, like a prayer. “No. No, I’m—I’m not here for that. I was sent here by—”

 

“I already _know_ that,” she snarls.

 

“You don’t,” he counters, still shaking his head. “I was sent by my mother. She called me, because—”

 

He pauses, and when his eyes track down her body it’s as good as a warm, loving caress from his big hands. She wants to jump into his arms, she wants him to carry her away from here, she wants him to take the gun. She wants to be good for him — like she wants him to be, for her. But she's missed him so much in the past two weeks, she has to wonder if it even matters to her anymore whether they’re good or not.

 

_Am I strong enough to walk away from you, from the possibility of what we could be, twice in one lifetime? Can I kill you, if you force me to?_

 

She's not, she can't, she _knows_ it, and recognizing that weakness within herself... it's a small, bitter relief.

 

 _I_ am _bad, a bad seed, just like I always thought I was. I love you and if that makes me bad just like you, then—so be it._

 

She feels like she's losing her mind, like she's being torn in half; she needs him, she doesn't want to _do_ this without him anymore, not when she's had a taste of what their life could be like. But she _can't_ just trade Kyril for Luke.

 

“Leia called me because someone very special told her not to give up on me,” Kyril murmurs, his eyes locked on hers.

 

“He came to warn us, Rey,” adds Luke, who has been watching this interaction shrewdly. When Rey glances at him, he gives her another pointed, meaningful look. “He's also got some very interesting documents in his hands there, and if you shoot them, you're going to make life more difficult for all of us.”

 

“Is it time to go, yet, Luke?” she asks, her voice pitched so high she barely recognizes it. Suddenly, it feels as though this entire scene is happening at the back of beyond, like she is watching herself and Kyril and Luke through a telescope. “Is it time to run? Can we go, now, finally?”

 

“Rey,” Kyril says, taking a step towards her. “Milaya. Please put the gun down.”

 

“What will you do, if I put it down?” she cries, a wounded yawp. “How can I _trust_ you? Even if I wanted to?”

 

“Do you want to? Can you believe in me, milaya? Believe that I'm here for _you_.”

 

He takes another small step. Then another. His bandaged left hand — _what happened?_ she thinks, descending deeper into panic, _who hurt him?_ — reaches for the gun.

 

“Can you do that? Can you believe in me?” he asks.

 

She doesn’t answer, but she does let him pull the gun from her loose grip. Another tiny step is all it takes for her to be a hair's breadth from his tree trunk body. Then she is enveloped in his embrace, her gun deposited in his coat pocket, the smell of winter air and cigarette smoke thick in her nose as she buries her face in his warm, solid chest.

 

“Kyril,” she moans, piteous and plangant. “I—”

 

“Боже мой, Rey—I know,” he whispers, ducking his head until it’s buried in her hair. “I know.”

 

So for a moment there is no need for words, just Kyril’s thick arms holding her so tightly she feels lightheaded, _finally, when I thought I'd never have him again, that I would be denied this all my life—_

 

Vaguely, she feels Kyril pass the envelope to Luke. She hears Luke store the envelope somewhere. She nuzzles her face against the rough wool of Kyril's coat, and he squeezes her in response. As if from somewhere far away, she hears Luke pick up the phone and place a call, speaking under his breath for a few minutes before muttering a rushed goodbye and hanging up. She runs her hands up and down the wide, strong plane of Kyril's back, and feels his lips graze her temple.

 

_This is it. This is all I need._

 

“Well, children,” Luke says, after a weighted pause. “As sweet as this is, I’ve just notified the authorities about Kyril’s change of heart. They’ve suggested that we get the hell out of here. We've got a rendezvous point, so... it is, in fact, time to go.”

 

She pulls away just enough to look up into Kyril’s eyes, and finds that he is already gazing down at her — soft, earnest, searching her face for something which he _must_ find there because he nods.

 

“Can you trust me?” he asks again.

 

“I can try,” she says, and he finds that sufficient enough to take her hand, pulling it to his lips so he can press a kiss to her knuckles.

 

Rey blushes anew, thinking of their first car ride and all that followed, and the kiss turns impish, the ends of his mouth twitching as he parts his full lips slightly so that his tongue can sneak out and taste her skin.

 

“Kyril,” she croons, anguished and delighted by equal turn. She wants to tell him she doesn't care anymore, that the minute she saw his face she decided that it doesn’t matter who he was, only who he's going to be. Whatever future that is, it belongs to her.

 

 _We belong together_ , she's about to tell him. _We belong to each other._

 

But he opens his mouth first — inhaling deeply, readying himself to say something, and she wants to hear it, she's so _ready_ for whatever it is—

 

But Kyril doesn't get to say it, and Rey doesn’t get to hear it, because at that moment, there is an abrupt knock on the front door.

 

Before anyone can move to open it, it is kicked in by a heavy booted foot.

 

A tall, swarthy man saunters in, followed by Ivan Ivanovich Snoke, a sneering redheaded man, and seven other severe-looking strongmen. The last in the line carelessly kicks the now-broken door closed, although it swings from its hinges at an angle and bounces off the frame, coming to hang awkwardly, still ajar.

 

“Так, так, так,” jeers Snoke, passing in front of the other men as he nears Kyril. “Твоя шлюшка из Вологды. Похоже, ты всё-таки потерял своё сердце в её киске. И гляньте-ка, ты нашёл её здесь вместе с Luke Skywalker. Каковы шансы? Нам всем невероятно повезло.”

 

“Я пришел сюда, чтобы убить его.” Kyril darts a glance at Luke who nods his acceptance of what, Rey thinks, must be the explanation that Kyril has just proffered.

 

Snoke sniggers, and like a line of falling dominoes — first the pale redheaded man, and then the others — they all begin to laugh.

 

“Да неужели?” Snoke asks, his voice dripping disgusted sarcasm. “Как амбициозно. Ну, ты всегда был охотником. Ладно, Ren. Мы свяжем их, и ты сможешь ими заняться... после того, как я с ними закончу.”

 

Snoke turns to Rey, his pale wraith’s eyes digging into her very soul. He smiles, gleeful and wide, revealing a blinding set of too-perfect white veneers that have gone grey at the gums.

 

 _Predator_ , she thinks, with a sinking feeling in her gut.

 

. . .

 

They both struggle, but it hardly even registers; they're drastically outnumbered.

 

Hux's gun, trained on him from across the room, keeps him rooted where he stands. Luke is trussed by the ankles and knees, hands tied out in front of him like a prisoner of war, then he is secured to one of his rickety kitchen chairs. Rey, across the table, receives the same treatment, although her hands are tied behind her chair.

 

“The wonderful thing about _you_ , Kyril,” Snoke begins, once Zima has double-checked the knots that hold them in place, “is that you are so—very— _bad_ —at lying. You always have been. Your face gives you away.”

 

He moves towards Luke.

 

“Stay where you are, Ren,” Hux commands, when Kyril takes a step forward. “I'm more than happy to use this, otherwise.”

 

And Kyril — his feckless heart fails him. He stands there in the kitchen, Rey’s revolver like an anvil in his coat pocket, calling to him even as he obeys, hands balled up by his side. She is staring up at him, her eyes open wide in pain and fear, barely blinking. Like a man hypnotized, he cannot look away and he cannot bring himself to _move_.

 

 _Ben_ , she silently mouths at him. _Please_.

 

The bruise that marred her eye the last time he saw her has healed. She’s even thinner than she was when they met, and her face has the sallow, waxen look of someone who has been burning the candle at both ends, without thought for food or rest.

 

God, how he wants to throw her over his shoulder like a neanderthal, drag her off someplace safe. He'd feed her something hearty and then wrap himself around her like a cloak, keeping her hidden, enshrouded by his own body, sated and sleeping until she woke with color in her cheeks once more.

 

And then?

 

Then he'd fuck her until her eyes rolled back into her head, until his spend and hers dripped down her thighs, until she sobbed from the pleasure.

 

She's so close. He can almost taste the joyful tears she would cry.

 

Snoke's dark growl interrupts his fantasy. “You said she was only a whore,” he says, advancing on Luke, “but your face was screaming out that you cared for her. That she was so much more than that. And even if you _did_ have a good poker face, I would've known her anyway. I had to look into it, of course—just to be sure. And do you know what I found?”

 

Kyril says nothing, stares back at Rey in horror, flinching when he hears the sharp crack of Snoke’s bony fist meeting Luke's jaw. Luke lets out a pained grunt, but after a career spent taking hits from men much stronger than Ivan Ivanovich Snoke, a pained grunt is the most satisfaction he will give the Krestniy Otets.

 

“I was right.”

 

The grievous thud of a punch to the torso, and then another. Tears have begun to well up in Rey's eyes, her face twisted in ferocious anger, and when the fourth blow falls across Luke's crooked nose — already broken and reset many times during a long and varied boxing career — she cries out.

 

“Stop! Leave him alone!”

 

“Don't, Rey,” Luke coughs, forcing the words out through bloody teeth.

 

Luke gets a jab to the eye for his trouble, and although Snoke is not a muscular man, the punch is still forceful enough to snap Luke's head back. His chair rocks precariously onto its back legs for a second before settling again.

 

“Knife,” Snoke barks, waving his hand towards Hux, who has chosen to adopt a smug silence for the duration of Snoke's monologue. He gawks at Kyril now, an unhinged smile pulling his lips back, then he reaches for the sheath he has secured to his belt.

 

The lethal-looking hunting knife he procures and hands to Snoke is at last eight inches long. He never once takes his eyes or his gun off of Kyril.

 

“I always am,” Snoke continues. “Right, that is. It's almost a burden, to be so infinitely smarter than everyone around you. I thought she looked familiar, and I had a suspicion as to _why_. And I was right! Do you know _who_ she is?”

 

Kyril shakes his head, hands twitching, despondent, despairing.

 

Snoke smirks at him, then lifts Luke's tied hands up towards the lamp that hangs over the table. Luke's eyes are fixed on Snoke. He looks furious, nostrils flared and eyes narrowed. Kyril cannot be sure if it is for Rey's sake — he's aware that Luke studied Russian in the past and in all likelihood understands what Snoke is saying — or if the fury is for himself.

 

Snoke presses the blade against the uppermost knuckle of Luke's right pinky, winks at Rey who has started a low incantation of _'no, no, no’_ , and—

 

He yanks. Hard.

 

Luke's finger falls to the floor and rolls away; blood begins to spurt at once from the exposed veins. The color drains from Luke's face as he stares up in horror at the ravaged stump where once his finger was. In a few seconds the veins contract, slowing the flow of crimson blood from a geyser to a trickle. Not once does he cry out.

 

Rey does, though.

 

“ _No!_ ” she screams, an outraged wail. She thrashes ineffectively against the ropes that bind her at the waist and feet, kicking and twisting her arms until Snoke rolls his eyes and turns to Pasternak who, like the other Vori, has been serving as impassive, menacing audience to this gruesome scene.

 

“Hold her down, will you?” he says to Pasternak, before turning back to Luke.

 

Kyril hardly knows what's more difficult to watch: Pasternak laying hands on his girl, because she is _his_ , more than she belongs to anyone else in this room, he has done what he could to climb back to her, and he was just about to tell her he wanted to earn her trust and her love when it all went to shit, or... the disappointed, tight-lipped look of resignation on Luke's face.

 

“No—” he moans, retching, when Snoke brings the knife to the joint of Luke's ring finger. From across the room, Hux clicks his tongue disapprovingly.

 

“You speak out of turn again,” Snoke hisses, pointing the knife at him, “and it'll be _your_ hand next.”

 

With that, he returns the blade to Luke's knuckle and wrenches, severing a second finger from his uncle's hand.

 

A weak groan — whose, he can't be sure. The sickening 'thwick’ as the knife cuts clean through the bone, tendons, muscle. Blood, an overpowering metallic scent that stings the inside of his nose. Dark garnet red splashed across Luke's wool sweater. The soft wet sound of a finger landing on the hardwood floor. Rey's tortured screams, now muffled by Pasternak’s meaty hand. Luke's eyes on him, blue as Lake Baikal in summer and hard as steel. Hux's shit-eating grin, his gloating chuckle.

 

Kyril thinks he is going to be sick.

 

. . .

 

 

Snoke takes one more, the middle digit of Luke's right hand, before he begins to speak again. He seems to delight in the gory process of separating Luke from his fingers; his and Hux’s laughter do nothing to staunch the rising bile in Kyril's throat, the way his head swims with rage and nausea. His vision has reduced itself down to a narrow tunnel, dim and blurred at the edges.

 

All he can see is his uncle's mutilated hand, and the betrayed look in Rey's teary hazel eyes.

 

_Failure. I have failed you again. I thought I could be good, but I am a fool, I have always been a fool, and a fool I was to think I could get away from this life._

 

“Here's your choice, you poisonous little viper, you traitorous son of a traitor,” Snoke says at last, giving Luke's head a patronizing little pat while ogling Rey, before he turns his attention to Kyril. “You take out your gun, and you shoot your uncle in the stomach—so he dies, nice and slow and painful. You do that, and all is forgiven. I'll even allow you bring the girl back to Moscow with you.”

 

He glides around the table, then holds the bloody knife to Rey's throat. The edge of it paints a red smear across her skin.

 

“ _Now_ ,” Snoke continues, “or I slit her throat—just like I did her father’s.”

 

Kyril’s blood freezes in his veins at those words, everything inside of him coming to an absolute standstill. He glances at Snoke, who grins, then turns back to Luke who, after a moment, gives a defeated nod.

 

“It's true,” Luke mutters. “I found out years ago, when I adopted her. I looked into her past with a little help from your mother, and—”

 

Snoke cuts him off, bristling at the use of English in his presence. “It is incredible that you thought you could just _lie_ to me, Ren—as if I am a fool.”

 

He pushes down on the blade, just enough to make a depression in Rey's skin but not enough to break it or draw blood. Her lips are quivering, although she sheds no tears; her gaze darts around the room like a cornered beast looking for escape. Kyril sees it, the instant she accepts that there is none.

 

Something flickers in her eyes, then dies.

 

_Now, he thinks—now I know what despair is. Despair is seeing that look on your face, Irenushka._

 

“I recognized these eyes the minute I saw them. I can't believe I doubted it—they are her mother's eyes, you know.” Snoke twists his neck so that he can peer down at Rey; his free hand pinches her jaw and forces her to look up at him. “ _She_ should have been mine, and this girl—should have been _my_ daughter.”

 

Rey snarls at him, teeth bared, and he chuckles. “But Desdemona—as she called herself, silly girl, after she took the child and ran from me—she was foolish, and she chose a two-faced weakling for her lover.”

 

He leans down and presses a kiss to Rey's forehead. She tries to jerk her head away, but he holds her still, and from across the table, Luke grunts in protest.

 

“Just like her daughter has,” Snoke comments, conversational in tone, his long fingers digging into Rey's jaw.

 

The Vori all remain silent, watching. Only Hux simpers at this comparison. Snoke's shocking acts of violence, the seething rage and terror rolling off of Rey, Luke's fading strength — the horror of this moment swells, billowing in the air like a malignant haze.

 

“I did her a _favor_. And did she ever thank me? She did _not_ , the ungrateful cow. She ran away to America, and took her bastard babe with her.”

 

Snoke looks back to Kyril, crystalline eyes blazing. “Shoot your uncle in the stomach, Ren, or I'll cut her open just like I did her dear papa. And _then_ I'll deal with you.”

 

Hux guffaws at that, and asks, his reedy voice full of contempt, “Do you need a gun, Ren? You're _more_ than welcome to borrow mine.”

 

“No,” is all he can get out, pulling Rey's revolver from his coat pocket. He checks the safety and the hammer, then aims it at Luke's blood-covered chest.

 

“Don't do this,” Rey blurts out, “ _Ben_. I'll help you stay here, in America, with me. We'll run away, we'll start a new life. Please. _Please_.”

 

“He's going to kill you if I don't, Rey,” he mutters.

 

“She even _sounds_ like her mother, although she's got that awful American accent.” Snoke runs the backs of his skeletal fingers down Rey's cheek.

 

“You could have been _mine_ , little dove,” he coos, leaning in close. Rey recoils, and he pouts at her mockingly.

 

“ _My_  little girl.”

 

. . .

 

Rey doesn't know what the disgusting old bastard is saying to her, doesn't know what the men in the room have been discussing, but she knows the fear that is making the veins in her throat jump wildly, making her head throb, her heart pound, her hands sweat. The edge of the knife has begun to warm against the column of her throat, where it digs into her skin just hard enough to be uncomfortable, not yet breaking the skin.

 

But she's already seen what it's capable of — what Snoke used it to do to poor Luke.

 

 _Don’t let him cut me,_ she begs to whatever higher power might be listening. _Get this knife away from me, oh God get the knife away, away, away, get it away—_

Rey is sixteen again, Unkar Plutt coming at her with a kitchen knife, the sharp serrated edge slicing through her tough thigh, a momentary delay in the conversation between her nerves and her brain allowing her to put him down, forever — her first kill, but no longer her last —

 

_I cannot let myself be cut like that again. Never again, never again, never again—_

 

As inconspicuously as possible, she works at the bindings around her wrists; they are beginning to loosen, but only slightly.

 

Snoke is still sneering down at her, still speaking to her, although he's let go of her jaw. And Kyril, _her_ Kyril?

 

He stands with his gun pointed at Luke, torn. Rey can see that he does not want to follow the apparent order to kill his uncle. It's there, in the way he works his jaw, in the ticking muscle beneath his dread-filled eyes. She thinks — she hopes — that he wants to end this. She _wants_ to believe in him, so badly.

 

“Ben,” she whines, and the knife presses just a little harder. She twists her wrist, trying to yank her hand free — but it's not quite loose enough yet.

 

“Продолжай, расскажи ей, что я сказал,” Snoke exhorts, before letting loose a gleeful cackle in her ear.

 

Whatever he has just commanded, it has no effect on Kyril. He says nothing, does nothing — simply stands there, as if frozen, his gun pointed at Luke, his eyes riveted to Rey. The redheaded man stands on the other side of Luke's kitchen table, his gun held aloft and pointed at Kyril's head.

 

 _How did I get here?_ she wonders, her thoughts disjointed and woeful. _I just wanted to find my family, I just wanted to be loved. What have I done to deserve this?_

 

The knife begins to draw blood when Snoke shifts the blade, slides it across her skin. Blood — she can just glimpse it running down her neck, only a few drops, but they're turning the collar of her oversized white t-shirt a dark crimson — blood like when Unkar’s knife sank deep into her leg, blood like what welled up between Phoebe’s tightly clenched fingers while they waited for the ambulance, wondering if she was going to live or die...

 

Rey whimpers; fear, pain and rage duel for supremacy in her fevered brain. _No, no, no, don’t cut me, not again, not the knife anything but the knife—_

 

She tries to wriggle away, but the big man returns, holding her still by the shoulders.

 

“Скажи ей.”

 

It's Luke who speaks next, gasping out, “Rey—Snoke, he—”

 

He glances up at her, looking so tired and weak and frightened. His fear feeds her own, and Rey whimpers again.

 

“He knew your mother,” Luke says, blunt, his tone apologetic. “He wanted her—your mother. She rejected him, so—he—he killed your father.”

 

Snoke's smile gets impossibly wider as Rey tips her head back so she can study his scarred face.

 

And then? Rey thinks nothing, she feels nothing. There is a blank veil of shock that falls down around her, and if she does think anything, it is only an errant wish that this shock will last forever, that she will never feel again.

 

“I'm sorry,” Kyril croaks. His dark eyes glisten with unshed tears.

 

“Kyril.” Her voice sounds small and faint, even to her own ears. She turns her gaze to him. “Ben. You are not the prince, watching your life be taken away from you. You are a knight. You are Dobrynya. You can stop this—be a _knight_.”

 

“Hе могу,” he moans. “I thought I could, but—”

 

“Что она говорит?” asks Snoke. Hux shrugs, and Luke only glares. The other men remain silent; she wonders if they are able to understand her and Kyril's exchange.

 

“You can.” Rey remembers the lament of Dobrynya she read back in the library, how badly she wanted to be near Kyril at that moment and reassure him that she’s glad he was born, glad that she met him. Again she jerks against the ropes, although they do not give — much. “You can—still come back. Be a knight, Kyril. Be a bogatyr. _Save yourself_.”

 

“Заткнись, сука,” Snoke fumes, when Kyril’s eyes flick to him, the briefest of glances, before returning to Rey. She hears doubt in the old man's gruff voice, can feel it in how the knife against her skin digs deeper. The sting of the blade has blossomed into sharp piercing agony, and a slow, hot stream has begun to trickle down towards her clavicles.

 

She keeps her eyes on Kyril. There it is — in his expression — a question. She nods at him, and in that moment he understands, whispering:

 

“Close your eyes, milaya.”

 

And Rey — she does.

 

A deafening crack rings out in the kitchen. A warm spray of blood splatters across her face.

 

Rey opens her eyes, and is greeted by the sight of Snoke's face — a thirty eight special bullet has ripped through his skin, his skull, his brain.

 

Snoke has been dealt death, at last, delivered from Rey’s gun in the hands of Kyril Ren.

 

She blinks her blood-painted eyelids, watching Snoke's features droop into the contorted grimace of death. Then he sinks like a stone to the hardwood floor. He does not move again.

 

In fact, for a fraught instant, _no one_ moves. Kyril is gasping for air, his eyes glued to Rey’s bloody face, and all she can do, restrained as she is by the big man's heavy hands still on her shoulders, is stare back.

 

Blood drips — from Luke's wounded left hand, from the cupboard and the swinging lamp and the tabletop, now all drenched in Snoke's brains.

 

Luke retches, and _that_ seems to spur the Vori into action.

 

. . .

 

Kyril knows he is fucked. He knew it the moment he pulled the trigger. He wishes, even as he shoots down three of his supposed partners, that he had used that eerie moment of silence following Snoke's death to say his goodbyes to Rey.

 

Rey, whose delicate neck is bleeding from the shallow slash Snoke has made there. Rey, whose face is bathed in his blood. Rey, who does not deserve this. Rey, who told him he was a _knight_.

 

Now — now, he cannot. Now the gun is wrenched from his hand as he staggers back from a jab to the nose, now he is fighting two men, and then three, then four and five, and then—

 

Five men, ten hands, ten feet, ten arms and legs. He never stood a chance.

 

He is overpowered, tackled to the floor, his head hitting the hardwood with a sickening thump.

 

“Kyril!”

 

He can hear Rey screeching, hear her squirming in her chair even as Pasternak holds her shoulders... but her voice sounds strange, distorted, as if he were listening to her cries from underwater. Kyril cannot move; the weight of five men has him pinned. Their thickly muscled limbs are just as strong as his — stronger, maybe, since he has done very little to take care of himself in the past two weeks and besides that, he still has two healing bullet wounds.

 

“Get the supplies,” growls Hux.

 

One of them — Zima, he recognizes him from his short blonde buzzcut — leaves through the front door. He returns a minute later, and in his hands—

 

Kyril's mouth goes dry. In his hands is a tattoo machine and ink capsules.

 

He tugs against the hold the men have on him. He kicks, he twists, he pulls. He cannot free himself.

 

“Stay still, asshole,” mutters one of them.

 

“Is he secure? Good,” Hux gloats, “Now—hurt him. Don't kill him, but—tenderize the meat a little, hmm?”

 

A gun is produced, its muzzle placed directly between Kyril's eyes. Zima commands, “Stand up.”

 

What choice does he have? He does as he's told. Zima steps back and extends his arm until the gun is aimed at Rey. The four men standing in a semicircle before Kyril grin at one another, and then — in turns — he is made their punching bag. Two of them hold him, two work him over.

 

They aim for his ribs, especially the bullet wound — pummeled until it reopens and begins weeping dark blood — and his stomach, his kidneys, his face—

 

He tries to fight back. He gets in a hit here and there. Maybe he gives one of them a black eye, but then he hears Zima click his tongue disapprovingly, and he gives up all resistance.

 

The rain of blows showered down upon him, by heavy tattooed fists, goes on for so long that Kyril's consciousness begins to fade, his vision collapsing to a keyhole, the walls of his mind closing in—

 

Eventually, he falls to his knees, accepting the brutal, methodical punishment without complaint. He becomes a human bruise, inside and out. Everything is painful, and still Rey is shouting, he tries to look at her but his eyes have begun to swell shut.

 

“Enough,” says Hux, at last. “So. Ren. You wanted to play the hero. Like father like son, they say—and so you are. An informer and a traitor, truly you _are_ Hanovich, son of Han Solo.”

 

Sneering at him, Hux pulls one leather glove and then the other from his hands. He tosses them to a nearby Vor.

 

“Who am _I_ to deny your destiny, Kyril Ren? You want to live like your father did? Then you'll die like he did, too.”

 

He turns, extending his hand to his accomplices. Kyril's heart pounds at the sight of the tattoo gun one of them places in Hux's opened palm. The men make quick work of his coat, along with the sweater and undershirt he wears beneath it. Then he is bare-chested, still on his feet only because they are holding him.

 

“But before that,” Hux explains, nodding down at the gun. “We're going to make sure that _when_ your body washes up somewhere along the beach of Coney Island—everyone knows exactly _why_ you have been executed.”

 

Hux steps closer to him, raising the tattoo gun until its needled edge rests against the top of Kyril's right pectoral, under his collarbone.

 

“I expect, Ren, that this will hurt a great deal—as I have no expertise in this particular art,” he warns.

 

But Kyril is not listening; he is distracted by Rey, whose face he can just make out between his slitted eyelids. She is crying, tears streaming down her soft cheeks.

 

_Those aren't the kind of tears I wanted from her, this is all wrong—she should be happy, this should be a joyous moment for us. How could I have let it come to this?_

 

He only vaguely registers the ominous buzz of the tattoo gun when it comes to life.

 

“I suggest that you hold—” Hux intones, bringing the sharp edge down into Kyril's skin, pressing far deeper than it needs to go.

 

“—very—”

 

Kyril grits his teeth against the shriek of protest from his ravaged nerve endings, but he doesn't move, doesn't try to knee Hux or shake the men off.

 

“—fucking—”

 

Rey is jerking her shoulders, snarling curses at Pasternak, who still holds her tight. He grins down at her, clearly amused by her struggling. Kyril spares a glance at Luke — he's passed out, his chin sunken down to rest on his chest and his butchered hand lying limp in his lap.

 

“—still.”

 

A tattoo stings in the best of circumstances, when its recipient is warm and relaxed and prepared for the prolonged pain, ready to accept the sharp hot bite of the needle and the days of burning ache that are to follow. A tattoo given against your will hurts ten times worse than that, and as Hux's needle stabs its way across tensed skin that has been made tender and bruised by the Vori’s fists, he cannot help it—

 

Kyril screams, he bellows, he wails.

 

“Stop it, you weakling,” Hux mutters, digging the needle in deeper. “Hold still, unless you want this to look like utter shit.”

 

He pauses to jab his elbow into Kyril's raw bullet wound vindictively, then resumes his tattooing.

 

Kyril, he really does _try_ to hold still if only to lessen the pain, but his breathing is ragged, erratic — and that makes Hux sigh with frustration.

 

“Ugh. Will you _stop_? It's going to _scar_. Not that it matters, I suppose. But some of us actually take _pride_ in our work, you know.”

 

Kyril knows that he is seconds away from crying, which will do him no favors. Hux has moved on to his left pectoral; now the burning pain is not only renewed, but seemingly redoubled.

 

 _Be my knight_ , he thinks he hears Rey say; maybe it is just an echo in his mind. _Save yourself. For me._

 

“I tried,” he moans aloud, and Hux throws a puzzled glance his way.

 

“Enough with the English, you son of a bitch,” Hux grouses, before resuming his task.

 

“Rey,” he cries out, “can you hear me? Are you still here?”

 

“I'm here, Kyril, I'm so sorry, I'm trying to get my hand loose but it just won't—”

 

“No, listen—listen to me. I love you,” he says, rushed, hurrying to get the words out. Hux pauses again, sneering at him with contempt, but Kyril has more to tell her. “I would have left behind everything for you. I would have spent the rest of my life as a pagan, worshipping at the altar I built for you.”

 

Hux rolls his eyes. “Shut the _fuck_ up.”

 

“I would have denied myself anything, given you anything, if only I could've been allowed to pass through life by your side,” he persists.

 

“Kyril,” she whines. “Ben. Don't give up. Please. I'm gonna get us out of here, my hand is almost—I just have to—”

 

“I love you,” he repeats. “I need you to know that, before I die. I don't care if it's crazy. You reminded me—that there is more. To life. You gave me a reason to be better—to be _good_. I’ll die loving you for it.”

 

“I love you too,” she keens. “Please—”

 

He can't see her anymore; he can't see anything but the red haze of pain, the inside of his eyelids.

 

Hux lays one final, blistering line of ink into Kyril's skin before turning off the gun and taking a step back.

 

“There,” he says, full of pride. “Perfect. _Now_ you're ready for death.”

 

Kyril forces his eyes open, stares down at his burning flesh, where blood runs freely from the two words that have been permanently carved with needle and ink into his skin: _cтукач_ , informer, and _изменник_ , traitor.

 

There's no going back now.

 

. . .

 

Rey knows now that she's going to have to dislocate her thumb if she wants to get her hand free. It'll hurt like hell, but then — it can't hurt any more than watching Kyril be pummeled by these brutes.

 

 _Kyril,_ my _Kyril, how dare these interlopers touch a hair on his head—_

 

She closes her eyes, bites the inside of her cheek, and yanks her right hand free of its binding with a sickening 'pop’. Before the big man behind her can react, she's twisted her neck and spotted her objective: the pistol he’s carrying in a holster at his hip.

 

Rey aims a punch backwards, grinning cruelly when she hits the big man's groin; he exhales in a pained wheeze and folds in on himself. Wrenching the pistol loose, she flicks off the safety with a hasty fumble before he even has a chance to react.

 

And then? Then it is Rey's turn. She looks him straight in his shocked blue eyes, reaches up and digs the gun into his hard chest.

 

“Fuck you,” she whispers, pulling the trigger. The man collapses, convulsing for a second before stilling.

 

 _How simple_ , she thinks. _How easy it was to kill you._

 

“Ты че, блядь?” hisses the red-headed man, whirling around to look for the source of the gunfire.

 

The pistol automatically recocks the hammer, so Rey wastes no time. She smiles at him, bloody and victorious, and says:

 

“Weren’t you listening to what he said? He's _mine_ , asshole.”

 

The man takes one angry step towards her, brows furrowed in consternation and tattoo gun raised threateningly, before she pulls the trigger.

 

 _Bull's-eye_ , she thinks, as the bullet find its home, dead center in the redhead’s chest. He, too, collapses to the floor.

 

The other Vori, mouths agape with shock, are slow to react. They clumsily draw their weapons, and one even gets a shot off — although it merely shatters a wooden leg of her chair.

 

But Rey's on a roll now. Five more men, five more bullets fired. They all drop like marionettes that have had their strings cut.

 

Even _she_ is a little impressed with her miraculous aim.

 

“Hot damn,” she whispers, licking her lips, and immediately gagging at the coppery dried blood she tastes there.

 

“Rey,” Kyril says, ragged, choked.

 

Without the other men obstructing her view of him, she can see him once more. And good _God_ , he looks awful.

 

He staggers forward, but sinks to his knees before he can reach her. Her hand is throbbing, her neck stings. Yet it's nothing compared to Kyril — blue-black eyelids swollen shut, bleeding bruises erupting across his torso, ink and blood weeping from the angry black words ingrained into his chest.

 

She is slow to untie the knots around her other hand, but manages it somehow, and the ones around her feet and waist after.

 

And then she is on the floor, crawling towards him, when—

 

A heavy foot swings up into her solar plexus, sending her rolling twice before she comes to land on her back. The redheaded man has risen from where he fell to the floor; he lurches toward her now like a ghastly revenant, an avenging spirit.

 

Rey has no more fear left to feel, though. Not for this man whose aortic blood has turned his black dress shirt shiny with a rapidly darkening burgundy stain, and whose face is pale, quivering. She settles herself on her back, one foot firmly planted on the floor, and raising the other, stomps the edge of her heel directly at the man's kneecap.

 

Pain explodes in her foot, but then — the move also achieves its intended purpose. His leg wobbles and he stumbles back, which gives Rey enough time to hook a foot around his weakened knee. With a hard tug, she sends him flopping down to the floor.

 

Kyril groans, and Rey thinks that the pale redhead is probably down for the count, but...

 

She's fucking furious.

 

"Who said you could hurt him like that? You think that skin was yours to do with as you pleased?" she spits out through clenched teeth, seating herself gracelessly astride his chest, directly over his bullet wound.

 

His hands rise up and wrap themselves around her throat and he tries to squeeze, but he's growing weak now. Bringing her arms up inside his and pushing her forearms outwards against his wrists, she breaks his grip easily.

 

With a quick jab — the outside of her hand serving as a dull, blunt blade against his Adam's apple — she has him coughing and choking. There's blood on his lips, and he tries, unsuccessfully, to buck her off. But Rey isn't finished with him, and she's not going anywhere.

 

There's no finesse to the series of vicious blows she unleashes upon the man's face, spitting incoherent curses at him while she works.

 

Jab, uppercut, cross, hook: these are all orderly names for a grim truth. They're all just a kind of hit, and a hit is just this: closed fists flying through space and time, delivering pain unto another's body.

 

So until the man's face is as broken and blue as _her_ man's, this is all Rey can think about; this delivery of pain, which the man unknowingly ordered for himself when he hurt Kyril. Eventually, he stops moving, and his head rocks to the side, unresponsive.

 

From across the kitchen, she hears Kyril call out for her in a faint, hoarse voice and this — this is what returns her to herself.

 

“Ben!” Hurrying to his side, Rey leans towards his blood-covered ear when he clutches at her waist, whispering, “Lie down. I'll be back in one second.”

 

“No!” he growls. His grasp on her tightens.

 

“Shh, it's okay,” she murmurs, helping him down onto the floor, before she jumps up and makes her way over the fallen bodies towards Luke. He's completely unconscious, and his hand isn't bleeding much anymore, but she pulls off her t-shirt anyway, wrapping the three dismembered knuckles as best she can.

 

“Luke?” There's no response from him, so she returns to Kyril.

 

“Milaya,” he sobs, when she lowers herself to the floor beside him.

 

“I'm here, Ben.”

 

He reaches for her and she scoots into his arms, careful not aggravate any of his wounds. She lays a gentle kiss on his lips, ignoring the revolting taste of blood she finds there.

 

“Am I good enough? Do I deserve you now?” It's just a broken whisper, barely audible, but in the stagnant, silent aftermath of all that violence — it's as though he's screamed it from the rooftops.

 

“Yes, Ben, yes,” she huffs, her throat clogged from emotion. Her lips are still pressed to his, and gingerly she wraps her arms around his neck. He lowers his forehead to her shoulder, and Kyril, her Kyril, fearsome criminal and murderer and supposed monster—

 

Kyril begins to cry. His heavy body is wracked by the sobs. Almost immediately, Rey is in tears as well. From relief, agony, horror, love, she doesn't know.

 

“I love you,” she breathes — because she can, because they are damaged but not ruined, because they are still _here_.

 

“I—I know.”

 

Whatever it is that makes them cry, the shedding of tears serves as a purgative balm. Rey feels hope flare back to life in her chest as she lies on Luke's kitchen floor, her body flush with Kyril's, both of them weeping like lost children.

 

And that is how, some time later, the FBI agent assigned as Luke contact, plus the heavily armed and armored SWAT squad she's brought along, find the pair.

 

. . .

 

What's your name?” asks a female agent, as Kyril is being moved onto a stretcher, Rey's small hand still tightly clasped in his.

 

“Benjamin Hanovich Solo,” he mutters, no longer able to open his eyes. “I'm American. On my mother's side.”

 

“Alright, Solo, just hold tight,” the woman says. “We're gonna get you out of here.”

 

. . .

 

Kyril passes in and out of consciousness on the ambulance ride to the hospital. He continues to do so while a pair of cold dry hands realign his broken nose and restitch the bullet wound at his ribs, along with all his other lacerations. After that's finished, he is given a dosage of painkillers. And so for a while, he sinks unthinkingly into dark, blank oblivion.

 

Occasionally, he dreams. One time, he finds himself in a maze of shadows, damp and chill, the pervasive sound of dripping water in his ears.

 

_Like a cave._

 

He wonders, in the dream, if a dragon is about to appear, if Zmey Gorynych herself is going to emerge from the mire and challenge him to battle.

 

And then — he sees her. In a corner of the wretched labyrinth, aglow like a celestial being, his angel—

 

Rey is here with him. A seraph robed in pure light so brilliant it is nearly blinding, her six great feathered wings twitch enticingly in the air behind her. Crowned with a golden halo like the saints of his youth, she smiles benevolently at Kyril.

 

She is so bright, shining white and gold and pure, the purest thing he's ever seen.

 

“Come,” she says, and holds her hand out to him.

 

Kyril glances down at his own body, and finds that he is no Theseus; he is Chernobog, a fearsome dark god with cloven hooves, curled horns, the head of a bull, and the leathery, flapping wings of a bat.

 

But Rey is no cherub. She wears four faces, all of them beautiful and fierce and terrible. She wields a sword made of roaring white flames.

 

“Was it meant to be?” he asks her. She continues smiling, and gives him no answer, instead taking his hand.

 

Ignoring his sharp claws, she leads him towards the light. Her mercy is a searing flame, leaving only Veniamin in its wake — scrubbed raw, his burned skin shines, pink and new and untouched.

 

A cleansing by fire.

 

Before he can begin to comprehend its meaning, the dream dissipates like a fog on a warm day — returning Kyril to oblivion.

 

. . .

 

Eventually, he stirs. When he does, he finds himself in a brightly lit hospital room, lying in a comfortable bed. His left wrist is handcuffed to the metal railing that lines the mattress.

 

 _Rey_ , he thinks, looking around.

 

There are no flowers or cards in the sterile room, but then — he wouldn't have expected any. There is, however, a visitor.

 

The tall, angular woman sitting by the foot of his bed has eccentric hair — an electric shade of fuschia, gleaming in its elegant chignon — but her clothes scream professional, a navy blue blazer and tailored trousers to match. She appears, to Kyril, to be about his mother's age, and she is reading a heavy book whose cover he cannot see.

 

She offers a tight smile when she notices Kyril studying her. “Anthology of Russian Folk Epics,” she says, holding up the book. “Good read. Lots of tragedy. You know it?”

 

He lifts his shoulders, a weary shrug. She nods, continuing, “So. Kyril Ren. Russian thief-in-law. Or is it Ben Solo, American—on your mother's side?” She smirks, as though she's ribbing him about an inside joke they've had for years.

 

“Whichever,” he rasps, his throat filled with rocks and his voice like sandpaper on dry lumber.

 

“Ben, then—since I'm a friend of your mother's.”

 

“And you are…?”

 

“FBI. Assistant Director Amilyn Holdo, of the New York Field Office. I run things for the feds in this town, and in the last few years we've developed a tidy little case against the Solntsevskaya Bratva, the Moscow-based crime syndicate with whom I'm _sure_ you're familiar.”

 

Again, she smirks. “Also, as I said, I'm an old friend of Mrs. Madam Ambassador Solo.”

 

“Of course you are,” he grumbles, heavy eyelids sinking closed.

 

“So now that we've introduced ourselves—how are you feeling, Ben?”

 

“Like shit.” His head feels muddy, sludgy, like the top has been lifted and the interior filled to overflowing with wet cement that is just starting to harden and ossify his brittle thoughts.

 

“Hmm,” she hums, chuckling. “That makes sense, considering. You up for chatting?”

 

Kyril takes a moment to assess the damage to his person, using the hand not cuffed to the bed-rail to lift the hospital gown he's wearing. The tattoo Hux gave him is beginning to peel, and beneath it, his torso is a sickly mottled landscape of indigo, scarlet and yellow bruises. His face throbs. He can feel the swelling in his bottom lip, and his eyes are so battered they refuse to fully open. Kyril assumes he probably looks like a swollen, rainbow-colored grotesquery.

 

“How long have I been unconscious?” he asks, after he deems himself out of danger from death's icy grip.

 

"Two days, give or take.”

 

“What're we going to talk about?”

 

Holdo rolls her eyes. “Football,” she teases.

 

He grunts, and closes his eyes again.

 

“I'd like to know,” she says, in a more earnest tone, “what you can tell me about the Brighton Beach-based Solntsevskaya Bratva, particularly in relation to their connections with the Moscow-based operation.”

 

“I'm not _from_ Brighton Beach,” he counters, wincing at how mulish and stupid he sounds before he's even finished.

 

“Right, good point,” she concedes. “Here's the thing, though—you were seen entering the home of the man in charge of the American Solntsevskaya—Diomedes. Greek and Russian descent. Not a nice guy. Presumably, you were in his home to participate in the big meeting of the minds.”

 

He manages another indifferent shrug.

 

“Well, Ben, no one else is talking. That's one reason I'm here. And you left those wonderful photocopies of the Bratva's financial records with your uncle—thank you for that, by the way, it's made my life _considerably_ easier. That's another. _And_ you're American—on your mother's side—which puts you in a unique situation amongst your compatriots. You see, Ben, you are in a position to offer valuable assistance to me. And because of your nationality, _I_ am in a position to offer valuable assistance to _you_.”

 

Kyril swallows, wishing desperately for some water, and suddenly, something cold and hard is dropped into his lap. He opens his eyes — it's a water bottle. Holdo is watching him, elbows resting on her knees, head craned forward and face tense with expectation.

 

“That is unless, of course,” she says, her eyes following his right hand as he awkwardly unscrews the top and lifts the bottle to his lips, drinking deeply. “Unless you don't want to talk to me, and you didn't bring the records here to share with _me_? I'm happy to begin the deportation process, in that case. I think we'll have a hard time pinning any of the carnage left behind in your uncle's house, since everyone who was there the other night who isn't dead—doesn’t seem to remember exactly what transpired. In any case, I imagine we can have you back in Russia with your pals in no time. I'm sure they'll _love_ your latest tattoos.”

 

“ _No_ ,” he gasps out, sounding a little more like himself now that he's had some water.

 

“Good!” She smiles at him, something a little less teasing and a little more cotton-covered iron. “Your mother told me you'd make the smart choice, when push came to shove.”

 

“Naturally,” he grunts. He can't quite tell where he stands with this woman — if he is being teased or threatened.

 

“Good,” she repeats, setting the book aside while she studies him back.

 

“So, here's how this will play out. You're going to tell me absolutely everything you know. And I'm going to record it, then consult with our lawyers. And if we decide it's useful, we'll apply to a judge for you to turn state's evidence. Capiche?”

 

“What about Rey?” he asks, voice breaking pitifully on her name.

 

“Do you mean Irena Imyarek?”

 

“Is she okay?”

 

Holdo gives him a genuine smile, megawatt, ear-to-ear. “Not only is she okay, but she’s applied for and been granted witness protection, along with her adoptive father. Luke Skywalker? I believe you're familiar with him as well. It's such a small world, isn't it?”

 

Kyril nods. “What happens to me, if I do this?”

 

“Oh, we'll have to iron out the details, but I imagine we can swing American citizenship and relocation, plus protection from the WITSEC program leading up to and during the trial,” she sighs. “Maybe we could set you and Miss Imyarek up somewhere together, if that's something both parties consented to.”

 

He nods again, studying the brightly colored label on the water bottle in his lap.

 

“Alright Ben, how about it? You've done a lot of bad in your life—your record says you spent two years in prison for carjacking, another four for manslaughter, and somehow I suspect the shit you _didn't_ get caught for was even worse—so, we could very easily ship you back to Russia. But, technically, you _are_ an American, and technically—we have no mutual extradition treaty with Russia. We'd like to use your testimony and your evidence to round out our case against the New York Solntsevskaya. So… ready to cut a deal?”

 

Kyril scans the empty room. One washed out painting of a beach hangs on the far wall, Holdo sits in the room’s only chair. He considers what awaits him back in Russia, and then promptly stops considering it, his mind shying away from the inevitable torture, bloodshed, and death that his return would herald.

 

He wonders about Rey, if she meant what she said about running away with him. If she still would, after all that has happened.

 

He thinks about the hours of tactical conversation he sat through at the condominium in Brighton Beach, about the meetings Snoke held in advance of their departure — the logistical discussions, the review of finances by the derzhatel obschaka, the Bratva’s bookkeepers — and then he thinks about the years of international gun-running he has helped to organize, whose operations’ long and snaking tendrils have even reached so far as America's shining shore.

 

His eyes meet Holdo's; her amethyst gaze twinkles with a sardonic, time-tested sense of humor.

 

He gives a quick jerk of his chin, signalling his agreement, and Holdo nods back. She pulls a small recorder from her pocket and sets it on the bed beside Kyril's thigh.

 

“February first, nineteen ninety four. Assistant Director Holdo of the New York Field Office, here with Benjamin Hanovich Solo, alias Kyril Ren, a thief-in-law and authority within the Moscow arm of the Solntsevskaya Bratva.”

 

She gestures, urging him to speak. “Whenever you're ready, Ben. Start from the beginning, and try not to leave anything out. I may ask a question from time to time, just to clarify a point here or there.”

 

He takes a deep breath, and another long pull from his water bottle. Then he begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Some translations:
> 
> "Боже мой." _[Boxhe moi.]_  
>  **My God.**
> 
> “Так, так, так... Твоя шлюшка из Вологды. Похоже, ты всё-таки потерял своё сердце в её киске. И гляньте-ка, ты нашёл её здесь вместе с Luke Skywalker. Каковы шансы? Нам всем невероятно повезло.” _[Tak, tak, tak... Tvoya shlyushka iz Vologdy. Pokhozhe, ty vse-taki poteryal svoe serdtse v ee kiske. I glyan'te-ka, ty nashel ee zdes' vmeste s Luke Skywalker. Kakovy shansy? Nam vsem neveroyatno povezlo.]_  
>  **Well, well, well... Your little whore from Vologda—looks like you did lose your heart inside her pussy after all. And what’s this? You found her here with Luke Skywalker? What are the odds? How very convenient for us all.**
> 
> “Я пришел сюда, чтобы убить его.” _[Ya prishel syuda, chtoby ubit' yego.]_  
>  **I’m here to kill him.**
> 
> “Да неужели?” ... “Как амбициозно. Ну, ты всегда был охотником. Ладно, Ren. Мы свяжем их, и ты сможешь ими заняться... после того, как я с ними закончу." _[Da neuzheli? ... Kak ambitsiozno. Nu, ty vsegda byl okhotnikom. Ladno, Ren. My svyazhem ikh, i ty smozhesh' imi zanyat'sya... posle togo, kak ya s nimi zakonchu.]_  
>  **Oh, were you? ... How ambitious of you. But then, you always were a go-getter. Alright, Ren. We’ll have them tied up, and you can get to work—after I'm finished.**
> 
> "Продолжай, расскажи ей, что я сказал." _[Prodolzhay, rasskazhi yey, chto ya skazal.]_  
>  **Go on, tell her what I said.**
> 
> "Скажи ей." _[Skazhi yey.]_  
>  **Tell her.**
> 
> "Что она говорит?" _[Chto ona govorit?]_  
>  **What's she saying?**
> 
> "Заткнись, сука." _[Zatknis', suka.]_  
>  **Shut up, bitch.**
> 
> "Ты че, блядь?" _[Ty che, blyad'?]_  
>    **What the fuck?**
> 
> Name meanings!  
> [Ermolai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yermolay) [Yermolayevich](https://www.russlandjournal.de/en/learn-russian/russian-boys-names/) [Pasternak](https://surnames.behindthename.com/name/pasternak): Divine Messenger Turnip... Junior.  
> [Timur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur_\(name\)) [Timurovich](https://www.russlandjournal.de/en/learn-russian/russian-boys-names/) [Zima](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zima_\(surname\)): Iron Winter... Junior.  
> [Palpatine](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Palpatine) Ivanovich [Diomedes](http://www.meaning-of-names.com/greek-names/diomedes.asp): Palpatine Evil King, Son of Ivan.
> 
> Links!  
> Who is [Ariadne](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariadne)? [Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theseus)? [The Minotaur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minotaur)?
> 
> Some background on [Brighton Beach](http://www.bklynlibrary.org/ourbrooklyn/brightonbeach/), and about the real estate revolution in [Little Odessa](https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/a-rise-from-the-ruble/).
> 
> LaGuardia has a terminal for [private jets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Air_Terminal)? Yes!
> 
> If you cut off a finger, will you [bleed to death](https://www.quora.com/If-I-cut-off-my-finger-and-dont-cover-it-how-long-would-it-take-to-bleed-to-death)? What [should you do](https://www.everydayhealth.com/pain-management/what-do-do-if-you-cut-off-a-finger.aspx)?
> 
> What's up with Russia and the USA's non-existent [extradition treaty](https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-there-an-extradition-treaty-between-Russia-and-the-U-S)?
> 
> What does it mean to [turn state's evidence](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_state%27s_evidence)? Here's some more info about being a [state's witness](https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/49975-faq-state-witness)! [P.S. Preemptive apology, as I'm sure I bungled some of the details, LOL]
> 
>  **Alright, here is a [hopefully helpful] cut and dry rundown of the violence in this chapter:**  
>  • Rey and Luke are tied to chairs.  
> • Snoke cuts off three of Luke's fingers, punches him multiple times.  
> • Kyril is held at gunpoint.  
> • Snoke holds a knife to Rey's throat. He makes a shallow but painful cut there.  
> • Kyril shoots Snoke in the head.  
> • Kyril shoots two more Bratva members, is restrained and beaten by the remaining men. He's given an involuntary tattoo by Hux.  
> • Rey shoots the man holding her in the chest, then shoots Hux in the chest. He survives this and kicks her; she uses several Krav Maga moves on him before punching him into unconsciousness.
> 
>  
> 
> That's all from me! Thank you, again, for reading! ❤️


	10. то, что должно быть приведено к присяге с кожей

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that which must be sworn with skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Let me just say: ❤️ _thank you_ ❤️. That's all — I could use another ten thousand words writing about how delighted I am that people have enjoyed this and come along with me on this ride. But that's enough for now.
> 
> One BIG-ASS thank you to [Kachenka](https://luminousreylo.tumblr.com), who not only helped me steer this chapter in the right direction, but who catches all my weird grammar mistakes! ❤️
> 
>  **Warnings for this chapter:** not too many! There's some **light light breathplay** , and if you want to skip it when you get to, _“My—your hand..."_ , move down to the next passage.
> 
> Okay, enjoy!

By day fifteen, Rey has chewed her nails down to the quick; her cuticles are frayed and scabbing from perpetual picking. Although she's done her best to maintain a more regular eating and sleeping schedule, the scale in the bathroom of the studio apartment, where she's been placed while awaiting her new life, tells her she's lost a few more pounds. The dark circles beneath her eyes stubbornly refuse to disappear.

 

 _I would be able to eat and sleep and relax_ , she grumbles to herself resentfully, at least a dozen times a day, _if I knew that he was alright—_

 

There's a small gym in the basement of her building. She is allowed to work out there a couple hours per day, under the watchful eye of Ben Kenobi, the deputy marshal assigned to her protection detail. Kenobi is a nice enough guy — older, refined, with cropped white hair and beard, a vaguely British accent he tells her he picked up during a wild youth spent gallivanting across the pond — and most importantly, he stays out of her way, giving her as much freedom as possible.

 

She splits her gym time between running on a treadmill and pummeling the punching bag that hangs in one corner. Sometimes Luke joins her, now that he's been released from the hospital — he mostly sits around on the stationary bike, clutching his two-fingered hand and staring off into space. Once or twice though, he’s let her show him some Krav Maga moves.

 

_Is Ben alive or dead? Is he going to cooperate with Holdo?_

 

Kenobi has repeatedly insisted he has no idea, and she has seen neither hide nor hair of Holdo since she was brought to this apartment the morning after the confrontation with the Bratva. Luke gives her cryptic half-answers, and usually finds a reason to be elsewhere soon after she asks. Residual guilt, Rey suspects — a souvenir of the events from two weeks ago. She's not quite ready to deal with the emotional fallout herself. Not until she has Kyril back.

 

She sets a half-empty kettle atop the tiny stove; Luke will be making his nightly visit soon. He's been placed in a studio of his own down the hall. Though neither of them are allowed to venture outside the building and have been discouraged from even leaving their apartments, visiting each other has been deemed permissible by Holdo.

 

A knock comes at the door. Rey startles — it's not Luke, he always uses two light kicks. This is three solid, steady raps of knuckles on reinforced steel. She takes the five steps necessary to reach the front door from the kitchen-living-room-bedroom space, and peers through the peephole.

 

 _Think of the devil and she shall appear_ , Rey muses, recognizing Holdo’s sharp cheekbones and glossy violaceous hair. She slips the chain lock from its track, flips the two deadbolts, and cracks the door open. Kenobi's nowhere to be seen, but that's not unusual — he often switches off with the nightwatch crew around this time, and they prefer to monitor her and Luke's building from the street.

 

“Hi,” she says, peering out into the hallway through the crack.

 

“Miss Imyarek, glad to see you’re practicing those safety precautions we talked about,” Holdo says, with a wry grin. “Although I didn't really mean for _me_.”

 

“Can't be too safe, right?” At Holdo's agreeable nod, she opens the door fully then steps back, welcoming the older woman inside.

 

“I'll get right to it, as I've got a lot on my plate these days,” she says, once she's settled herself at the flimsy card table that serves as Rey's dining area. “I'm not really supposed to be handling individual cases like this, but as you know—I’ve taken a particular interest in Benjamin Solo. I've been visiting him daily at the hospital—”

 

“Is he okay?” Rey cuts in. Although she winces at the needy eagerness in her voice, she waits with bated breath anyway — unwilling to retract the question, regardless of her embarrassment.

 

“He's doing surprisingly well,” Holdo admits. “To be honest, his doctors are sort of shocked. They're ready to release him—this evening maybe, tomorrow morning at the latest.”

 

“Oh.” She's thrilled, stomach fluttering and fingers roaming agitatedly across the polyester tablecloth, but — it's clear that Holdo isn't finished talking, and Rey waits with sealed lips for the other shoe to drop.

 

“The judge accepted his testimony and evidence,” Holdo adds, without preamble. “Which means he is officially under the protection of the U.S. Marshal Service and the WITSEC program. But—”

 

Behind her, the tea kettle begins to whistle. Rey pops up to take it off the flame, then pulls out a mug. She steals a moment while she has her back turned to Holdo to take a calming breath, force her face back into a composed expression.

 

“Tea? I have Russian Caravan—it’s black,” she offers.

 

“Pick that up on your vacation?”

 

Rey blushes under Holdo’s bemused gaze. “I guess you could say I was converted.”

 

“None for me, I won't be staying long,” she says, watching as Rey drops a tea bag into the mug, pours in the water, and returns with it to her chair, keeping it in her hands to avoid further fidgeting. “I'm just here to ask you what _you_ want—in regard to Solo.”

 

“Huh?” Rey sputters, her heart seemingly skipping a beat, then two. She looks down at the mug, tries to steady her trembling hands.

 

“He's been asking for you for two weeks, any time he's awake. When he was told he would be released soon—”

 

 _“What?”_ Rey slams the mug down onto the table, sloshing hot tea over the sides. “Why didn't you _tell_ me? Why haven't I been allowed to visit him?”

 

“Miss Imyarek, think about the security risk. Hospitals can be difficult enough to control as is. We've got deputy marshals guarding him around-the-clock. Then we bring _you_ , also a target, into the same unpredictable space?”

 

Rey scowls down at her half-full mug, saying nothing.

 

“Will it make you feel better to know he's requested to spend the duration of the pre-trial custody with you?” Holdo asks, creases at the edges of her eyes appearing from when she gives Rey a sincere smile.

 

Rey’s head springs up at that — avidly, she studies Holdo’s face for jest. Finding none and feeling too agitated for speech, she merely nods.

 

“I take it that's a yes to feeling better _and_ a yes to his request.”

 

“Yeah,” Rey whispers, lips pursed to stifle the gleeful holler welling up inside her. “Yes. Bring him here.”

 

. . .

 

A few hours later, another knock on the door resonates through the tiny studio apartment.

 

Although everything is warped by the peephole’s convex lens, Rey squeaks happily when she looks through it — standing in the hallway is Kyril, looking like his old self. She unlocks the door and flings it open, then revels at the sight of him. He's grown a patchy beard over the last two weeks and he, like Rey, has dropped some weight — his face is more angular, his jawline sharper. He doesn't quite fill out his coat like he did when they first met.

 

But he's healed. And more importantly, he's beaming down at her.

 

“ _Irenushka_.” His deep voice thrums with something — fulfillment, maybe. Relief. Serenity.

 

That's all it takes. Rey leaps at him, her arms twining around his neck. He's not quite prepared — he catches her, but staggers backwards a few steps in doing so. Still, his legs hold, and he stabilizes, swaying a little as he pulls her closer.

 

“Возлюбленная.” The word is sighed in her ear, right before he hides his face in her neck. He releases another contented sigh, and Rey —

 

Rey thinks her heart might burst from how full it feels.

 

. . .

 

She gives a grateful wave to the deputy marshal that drove Kyril over, once she finally lets him go. Then, wordlessly, she herds him inside the apartment and into the microscopic bathroom. She turns on the tap, giving the water time to heat.

 

He says nothing, makes no move to resist as she tugs his heavy coat off his broad shoulders, as she pulls the sweater lent to him by Luke up and over his head, as she reaches for the belt keeping Luke's jeans from falling off him.

 

The heap of clothing on the floor continues to grow — first his clothes, then her flannel pajamas, finally, their underwear.

 

 _What a simple thing it is,_ Rey thinks, studying his weakened but still-solid form — _what a simple joy, standing naked in the bathroom in front of the man I love._

 

But he looks wary, shooting little glances down at himself, muscles tensed.

 

“Hi,” she says, breaking into a nervous smile. Her own body, she's sure, has certainly looked better. She shaved everything in a frantic rush after Holdo left, with shaking hands that left bloody little knicks and cuts everywhere. She's lost too much muscle, fat — much of the softness and definition she thinks he probably appreciated on her.

 

“Привет,” he huffs. A corresponding smile, nervous and hesitant, cracks open his solemn face.

 

The thick black lines of the words tattooed into his chest have healed. They are angry-looking, the scarring around them making the hasty, amateurish letters even more warped and uneven. The darkening bruises that covered his torso the last time she saw him have receded too, leaving in their wake pale tattooed skin, littered with dark moles and gnarled fresh scars.

 

Kyril's eyes never leave hers as she gently traces each letter with her pointer finger. Her other hand rests flat on his chest; she can feel how hitched and shallow his breathing is. Surprisingly, considering how exhausted he looks, his thick, heavy cock begins to darken, swell, grow hard — it twitches itself to life against his thigh.

 

“What do they say?” she asks, when she's finished her tracing.

 

“Traitor,” he rasps, his voice rough from disuse. “And informer.”

 

“ _My_ traitor,  _my_ informer,” she amends, then peers up at him through her eyelashes. “Aren't you?”

 

His lips twitch, big hands spanning her waist, thumbs smoothing themselves over the xylophone bars of her rib cage.

 

“Come here—closer,” he murmurs. “I want to touch you.”

 

She wants that too, but the smell of hospital clings to him — antiseptic and plasticine — so she takes his hand, walking backwards into the narrow shower stall. Even with his slightly diminished bulk, there's barely space for both of them. He crowds her against the cool tiled wall, forearms resting beside her head and neck craned so he can lower his lips to hers.

 

There's nothing nervous or hesitant about the way he kisses her. He parts his lips at once, pushing his erection and jutting hip bones into her belly. Arms slipping down to wrap tight across her back, he runs his tongue across her lower lip. With a whimper, she opens to him — her tongue meets his, a soft tussle that has them both panting, has him inserting a thigh between hers and pressing up against her sex, lifting her up onto her toes.

 

 _Oh—this_ , Rey thinks, moaning into his mouth. _I missed you, and—God, how I missed this._

 

Water-slickened skin slides against skin. Her hands memorize the hard lines of his biceps while Kyril's velvet tongue massages hers, his cock against her pelvis, reddened head peeking out from his foreskin and beginning to drip, his thigh rubbing her clit just right, euphoria just around the corner and Rey's thoughts already beginning to unravel —

 

“Milaya,” he hums at last, as the water streams down over both of them, “I am your humble servant. Whatever you want me to be—I am.”

 

“I just want _you_ ,” she chirps, an odd falsetto caused by Kyril's clever fingers seeking out her slit, collecting the slick wetness he finds there. “Nothing else.”

 

“You have me. Please believe that you have me,” he says, sinking to his knees. He sucks on his fingers, tasting her, then leans forward to seek out the source. Lifting her leg over his shoulder with a gentle hand on her scarred thigh, the heel of her foot coming to rest against his spine, he nuzzles her other thigh, the one still supporting her. The bristly hairs of his beard tickle, and her knee shakes, just a bit, at the hot twist of need in her cunt. She slams her hands against the narrow walls of the shower stall, in an attempt to keep herself upright.

 

“God, you taste so _good_.” A peck against the tender skin there, then leaning forward slightly, he hungrily kisses his way up her hot, slippery wet folds. “Ambrosia.”

 

“Ben,” she tries to say, but it comes out as a whine, because he's lapping at her, quick fast licks across her clitoris alternated with decadent passes of his tongue inside her, while this thumb continues to work her throbbing  bud —

 

“You, ah—you don't have to, I know you must be—”

 

“Shh,” he soothes, pulling away to gaze up at her. “I want this. I _missed_ it. I need it. But I'll stop if you want me to—do you want that?”

 

“No.” She thrusts her hips forward, offering herself. “I—I need it too. But you—you’re hurt—”

 

“I know what will make me stronger,” he murmurs, already returning his mouth to her mound. With a soft, sweet kiss placed there — like a chivalric overture extended to her inflamed folds, he dives back in.

 

Long, indulgent strokes with the flat of his tongue up her lips, exploratory tonguing at the swollen inner walls of her cunt, all a prelude — finally, he sets his sights where she wants and pays her clitoris all the attention that is its due. Every nerve in her body goes into overdrive when he wraps his lips around it and _sucks_.

 

“Tell me if you like it, tell me _what_ you like,” he directs against her skin, eyes sinking closed. “Just—talk to me. Let me hear your voice.”

 

“Oh—okay. I, ah, it's so—” She buries one hand in his dense, wet mess of hair, tugging on the locks gently, and sighs when he groans.

 

“I love this,” she chokes out, her leg beginning to shake in earnest from the rich rising swell of joy and pleasure. He licks and slurps at her without care for the obscene sounds he's making, like a starving man given a death row meal, and suddenly, she feels the urgency of her impending orgasm bearing down on her. “I love your mouth. I love you, Veniamin Hanovich Solo.”

 

He hasn't been holding anything back up until this point — at least she didn't think so — but then he growls, opening wide until his mouth covers most of her vulva. He pulls from her — subtle tongue and supple lips — an unearthly cry. He's going to eat her _up_ and she's going to thank him for it —

 

“I could live off of this,” he says, a suspiration, as he returns to her clitoris, two fingers reaching up to caress her now tender, swollen lips before probing inside. “You have a perfect pussy, milaya. This would be enough for me, just this.”

 

“I hope not,” she gasps. “I want _all_ of it, I've earned everything, _haven't_ I? You're making me feel—so, uh—oh God harder, please baby more—”

 

He complies, pulling his fingers out and driving them back in, curling them forward, redoubling his unrelenting attention to that searing, singing knot of flesh.

 

“You're so good at this, how is that possible? I'm gonna come, Ben—can I come? Please?” she rambles, begs — not even finished the question before he's nodding enthusiastically.

 

His eyes are like midnight, riveting and potent. “Come for me—on my tongue. Be good for me—it's been so _long_ since you gave me a gift, мой волчонок.”

 

The water has run cold but that hardly matters because Rey has been set aflame, immolated by the sight and feel of this man she has fought so hard for — who fought so hard for her — on his knees, working her over _perfectly_ , devouring her —

 

 _How do you know just what brings me to the edge?_ she wants to ask. They've only ever done this once together — they only met a month ago, but — but —

 

 _“How?”_   That's all she manages.

 

He smiles — she can see it in the way his lips curve up at the edges, but he will not be distracted now. He sucks, he soothes, he laps and laves — he fans the flames with his talented mouth. His eyes drink in her face, while below he drinks down everything else.

 

“Fuck!” she wails, as her cunt flutters around his fingers and a sharp, blinding kind of release starts from her core, emanating out like frantic little bolts of lightning, electric heat crackling along her skin, shuddering and shivering and chanting his name —

 

_Ben. Ben. Oh, Ben. My Ben. My love._

 

It pulses through her, this climax, burning away everything that came before — everything but the wild sensations of her galloping heart, her clenching core, and her man's mouth guiding her home again.

 

When Rey finally opens her eyes, not realizing that they’d slammed shut at some point during her orgasm, she is greeted by the sight of Kyril panting, broad torso expanding and contracting rapidly with each winded breath, one of her legs still flung over his shoulder. He gazes up at her with adoration written so clearly across his face she almost comes again. One hand strokes his massive dripping cock in what appears to be a punishingly tight grip while the other still pets her tender sex.

 

“Возлюбленная,” he groans, face reddened.

 

The veins in his neck are bulging, every tendon visible. Bringing the hand soaked in her clear sticky juices to his mouth, he shoves it inside, sucking — eyes never straying from hers — and comes in three long spurts all over his belly and thighs with a long, low groan around his fingers, a guttural noise that makes her breath stutter inside her breast.

 

 _Oh_ , Rey realizes, surprised, as an unbidden sob tears itself from her throat. _I'm crying._

 

“Hey, hey,” he says, quiet, still breathless. He lowers her leg back to the shower floor; Rey winces when her foot lands in the now frigid water pooling there. One hand slides up her thigh, coming to rest on the long scar running the length of it.

 

“What’s wrong? What is it?”

 

“It was so _good_ , but—” she whimpers.

 

Her legs buckle; she begins to slide down the wall then sighs with relief when his hands — solid as ever, each one grasping a jutting hip bone and _there it is again_ , that way he makes her feel dainty — they catch her. He eases her down, depositing her astride his lap.

 

“Are these happy tears, мой волчонок?” he croons, tucking her into his body. His hands run calming trails up and down her back.

 

“I—yes, but I wanted it—inside. It should've been for both of us—this first time.” She lets her head roll forward, wrung-out and limp, and rests her forehead against his shoulder, right over the tattooed knife. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry—for _everything_.”

 

“No, no, no,” he says, pulling closer until her sensitive, puffy seam is flush with his softening cock. His big hands easily cup her bottom. “Please—I meant what I said. I _needed_ that. But—was it too much, milaya? Too soon?”

 

“It was perfect,” she heaves, a shuddering sob. “I was so scared I'd never feel you touch me again. It made me feel like—I just—felt so hopeless—”

 

His resumes rubbing her back, their torsos flush — the icy water streams down over both of them. She feels Kyril reach up and turn the tap off.

 

“Rey.” Somber, searching — he tugs gently on her hair, lifting her head up off his shoulder so he can meet her eyes. His pupils — still blown wide, dark and fathomless in this light — travel back and forth, the way a person's does when they're reading a book.

 

Only Kyril — he's reading _her_ , just like he has since the day they met.

 

“Don't you see?” he sighs. “We _made_ it—this is ours, now. There's no rush for us. Not anymore.”

 

He pushes her wet hair out of her face — fussing with it, smoothing it into perhaps a state less wild than the one it's in now.

 

“No rush,” she echoes, reading him too. His scarred face is unfurrowed, calm. _Serene_ , she reflects. _Is this real? Is this ours now, just ours, for the rest of our life?_

 

_Can she be allowed to laze in his love like a cat does a patch of sunbeam? Are they safe, at last?_

 

He nods, offering her an understanding smile, his hands holding her close.

 

“No rush at all,” he affirms, so earnestly that Rey can't help but think it sounds like a promise.

 

. . .

 

Later, after he's inhaled all of the leftover spaghetti in her fridge and two bowls of cereal while she watches in awe, they curl up together under the thick comforter of her queen-size bed.

 

 _Funny_ , she thinks, their bodies practically fused together — his knees pushed into the backs of hers, firm torso a heated wall at her back, long arm like a heavy seat belt across her waist. _This bed felt a lot bigger and colder this morning._

 

“Do you—is this apartment okay? It's just temporary, until the trial finishes, and everything's ready, then—” she stammers, self-conscious about the messy state of the place — unmade bed, pile of dishes in the sink, layer of dust everywhere. _What if he regrets coming here?_

 

“ _You're_ here,” he breathes, rubbing his nose against her neck. “So it's perfect.”

 

“And—after? After the trial?” She holds her breath — it’s all but certain what his answer will be, and yet, there is always that old insecurity ready to rear its head, whisper terrible things in her ear —

 

“What do _you_ want?”

 

“This,” she replies, without hesitation.

 

His hand settles on her belly, fingers spread wide, rubbing a tight circle again and again. Everything feels so hazy and warm and safe in the low muted light of her bedside lamp, snuggled under the covers with Kyril touching her.

 

“Me too.” His voice is steady, unshakably calm — with maybe a hint of relief, although she can't be sure. “We'll go where they send us, then—we can start over. Build something new.”

 

“Together?” she entreats.

 

“Together.” The pressure of his palm, his long fingers on her concave stomach — it feels amazing. It is as if he's kneading away all the fear and anxiety she's been carrying around in her gut, since — well, since she left him, really.

 

“You hungry?” he asks, hushed. “I saw sandwich stuff in the fridge. Let me make you something.”

 

She checks the clock on the wall above the kitchen counter: almost one in the morning. It's impractical to eat this late, isn't it?

 

As if in refutation, her stomach unleashes a prolonged, rumbling growl. She's made aware, all at once — relaxed and secured and nestled inside the warm confines of Kyril's embrace — of just how little she's been able to bring herself to eat as of late.

 

“If you don't mind,” she whispers, blushing.

 

“Humble servant,” he reminds her, with a kiss brushed over her neck as he unearths himself from the covers.

 

Rey burrows deeper beneath the comforter, cold without Kyril’s furnace of a body. Outside the studio's two windows, the endless snowstorms of mid-February Connecticut have thawed into wintry rain, which pelts the glass in a lulling rattle. Silently, she watches him cross the room and open the fridge.

 

“Turkey and swiss?” he asks. He assumes a casual lean as he peers inside at the contents within; Rey cannot help but respect his utter disregard for his own nudity. “With mustard?”

 

She gets lost in her admiration of his body for a moment — even weakened by his injuries, he's still a powerhouse. His long thighs are still dusted with hair, moles sprinkled liberally over his acres and acres of pale skin stretched over burly limbs. His back is still wide, if less muscled; the Madonna and baby Jesus and stalking tiger are all present and accounted for, ass still enviably sculpted, spine a little more visible, but even so —

 

Rey loves looking at him like this, at her leisure — loves the mind and the heart inside the body. Loves it all. _How lucky I am, to have this man in my life._

 

“Sounds perfect,” she says with a grateful smile, when he glances back at her.

 

. . .

 

Later still — in the dark, Kyril once more spooning her, only the sound of the icy rain outside and his breath on her neck, she finds the wherewithal to ask:

 

“What should I call you now? Are you Ben, or Veniamin, or Kyril?”

 

There is a long pause. “I'm not sure,” he muses. “All three. None. I don't know. If—if I give up the name Kyril, am I trying to free myself of the things I've done under that name? Do I even deserve that?”

 

His hand resumes rubbing its earlier circuit across her now-sated belly — spread fingers spanning most of her body.

 

Rey swallows. “Maybe. But I don’t think it’s undeserved.”

 

“But then—I have always _been_ Veniamin, even when I was Kyril,” he continues, sounding disheartened. “They're one and the same, only—the name, Kyril Ren, it was who I thought I needed to be.”

 

“It gave you a purpose?” she supplies, her voice wan, and feels him nod, then push one of his thighs between hers so that their legs are entangled.

 

When he speaks again, his tone is self-deprecating, dry. “Yes, and—a mask, I think. It was a mask to hide behind—to help me pretend my life was my own. That I was not being—used, again, in a different way.”

 

“You aren’t that person anymore.” Laying her hand atop his, enjoying how they move as one — she snuggles back into him. “Are you?”

 

“I—I don’t want to be,” he says, resolute. “But am I worthy of this, now? Peace? A new life? Us?”

 

“I think so,” she says, lacing her fingers through his. She can't see them in the dark, but she's long since committed to memory the inked crosses that lay there. “There's no hiding your sins—they're right here. But—we're more than the bad things we've done, and the bad things that have been done to us. Wanting to make it right and then move on with your life, do better— _be_ better—that’s what living is. And you deserve that, as much as anyone does.”

 

He makes a strangled noise, his hand pressing hard against her stomach to bring her even closer. She feels his chest shake — warm tears begin to drop onto her shoulder. He remains mute, restraining his emotion to half-swallowed sobs.

 

Rey wriggles inside his embrace, doing a shuffling little half-turn, and then another, until she is face to face with his hard chest. She reaches up, feeling for his wet cheeks in the dark, and pulls his head down until his face rests on her shoulder.

 

“It’s okay,” she soothes. “We _made_ it, remember? This is okay, it’s all okay—this life is _ours_ , now. We can cry, if we need to.”

 

Kyril’s tears are warm against her skin. He holds her so tightly, his strong arms keeping her body flush with his, and he weeps. It hurts her, to feel his body shudder against her own, but she takes some small solace in knowing she can give him this — that here he is safe, and he knows it.

 

When his breathing grows steady and quiet again, she whispers, “Do you _want_ to be Kyril? Do you need that anymore? Because you can be anything you want now. So—who do you want to be?”

 

“I'll always be Kyril Ren. But—I _want_ to be a man, a good man. _Your_ man. I want to be Veniamin.”

 

“Well then, _Veniamin_ —you are a good man, to me.”

 

For a time, they fall silent, Kyril's body wrapped around hers keeping her warm, contentment making her drowsy.

 

“Hey, you always call me Irenushka,” she remarks, voicing a question her mind has stumbled upon. “What's the nickname for you—for Veniamin?”

 

“Venka, Venya or—Venyusha, I suppose.”

 

“Venya,” she murmurs. “I like that. Can I—”

 

She can feel the upturned curve of his mouth, when he brushes his lips against her cheek. “Yes, milaya, call me anything you like.”

 

“Venya,” she repeats, enjoying the way her teeth sink into her lip on the 'v’ and the rolling motion of her tongue when she pronounces the 'ny.’

 

“Venya, Venya, Venya.”

 

“Mmm,” he moans. He nudges her back until she's lying prone, trapped beneath his solid weight — then grinds his half-hard cock against her thigh: “That's _very_ good. Excellent pronunciation. You're such a good woman, Irenushka. I’m going to remind you of that, every day for the rest of our lives.”

 

It’s so _perfect_ — the promises he's making, his body on top of hers. He twitches his hips, and she sucks in a sharp breath, desire making her toes curl and sticky heat gather between her thighs. It reminds of her dream, the one she had the night she returned from Russia — when she thought they were surely finished for good, when she wondered if she was pregnant.

 

“I can't believe you're here,” she bleats, feeling a little desperate, not knowing for what.

 

“It feels like a dream, doesn't it?”

 

“Yes. It—I'm so _tired_ , I missed you so much—it took everything I _had_ to keep going after—after I left.” The confession is choked by tears of her own, rising up for the second time today before she can stop them.

 

Kyril stills against her, then scoots back, his hands on her waist rolling her onto her side so that she’s facing him. She squints in the darkness, barely able to make out his features in the pitch-black apartment.

 

“Let's not do that anymore,” he says, in a firm tone.

 

“Wh—what?” she sputters. _Did I say something wrong, did I say too much?_

 

“Leaving.” His hand under her chin raises her face, and his lips brush hers. “I don't want to be left behind anymore, do you?”

 

“No more leaving,” she vows, one hand rising to grasp the bicep that serves as her pillow, the other looping itself around his waist. Her heavy eyelids begin to droop. “Never again. Just give me a minute, and we can—I'll be ready to—”

 

“Shh,” he shushes, his free arm pulling her in, holding her to him by the nape of her neck. “Sleep, мой волчонок. There's no rush.”

 

So she does.

 

. . .

 

Kyril wakes to a bright morning, pale winter sun streaming in through the gauzy curtains. He takes a second to study the apartment — there's not much to it, so he's finished pretty quickly. Bare white walls, simple furniture — the bed they're lying in, a wooden dresser, a table and two chairs, a kitchenette counter, stove, and fridge shoved against the far wall, bathroom tucked in next to the door.

 

But really, he dismisses those elements as quickly as he notices them. What he _likes_ about the place immediately, what stands out to him — are the traces of Rey scattered about. The pile of books — Russian literature, he notes with pleasure — atop her dresser. A poster of David Bowie, perhaps retrieved from her apartment along with other more essential belongings, taped to the refrigerator door. A chipped coffee mug on the counter that reads, ' _TOUCH ME AND YOUR FIRST KARATE LESSON IS FREE_.’

 

Mundane objects that shade in details, deepen his understanding of this woman, whom he adores: the little things that cannot be gleaned from dramatic professions of love or stolen sex-filled weekends.

 

Rey is already awake — she’s watching him, her head close to his on the pillow, her eyes a lovely jade green in the early light. Her lips twist into an embarrassed pout when she realizes she’s been caught gawking, and in what Kyril assumes is an attempt to pretend that’s _not_ what she was doing — she abruptly slams her eyes shut.

 

“Rey,” he says, trying not to laugh. “I know you were watching me, milaya.” Nothing, her eyes remain closed. If anything, he thinks she might squeeze her eyelids together more tightly. “Irenushka.” She gives a minute shake of her head, a rosy blush fanning out across her cheeks.

 

“Возлюбленная,” he tries.

 

One eye cracks open. “Not fair, I don’t know what that one means,” she huffs. “Are you making fun of me? I wasn’t being creepy, I just—”

 

He waits, but she’s faltered, and begins to worry at her lip instead of continuing.

 

“Beloved,” he murmurs, rolling over onto his back and taking her with him. “It means beloved. I don’t think you’re creepy. Were you watching me, мой волчонок? Do you like what you see?”

 

“You _know_ that I do,” she grumbles as she climbs astride his hips, hands planted on his fresh tattoos. He beams up at her.

 

“Venya?”

 

She adjusts herself until she’s leaning her weight on her hands, teasing him with the slow twisting of her hips. Her sex is sultry and soft and beginning to drip onto his cock, the length of which she’s rubbing herself along.

 

“Yes?” he coughs, fascinated by the way his flushed and dribbling glans, revealed when her backward slide pulls on his foreskin, peeks out from beneath her mons.

 

“Let me take care of you, baby,” she says. “I'm gonna take such good care of you. I'm going to learn how to cook steak and potatoes, and we’ll have them every night for dinner until you're big and strong again—until we both are. And we can train downstairs in the gym, and—”

 

She breaks off to lean over him, still gyrating, and place a gentle kiss on the word изменник, then the word стукач — so gentle, in fact, that Kyril has no choice but to gently grasp the nape of her neck, bring her lips up to his.

 

“Irenushka,” he hums, before kissing his way along her jaw.

 

“I'm gonna make it all okay. I’ll fix it. I’m going to be good for you, I _promise_ ,” she whispers.

 

“You don't have to _fix_ anything.”

 

“I left you,” she says, catching at his lips again. “I didn't want to but—”

 

_Ah. So that's what this is about._

 

“You had to,” he tells her. “You were _right_. You needed to, and—I needed you to, as well.”

 

Her face crumples. She pauses her writhing, looking down at him with shining eyes. “It hurt.”

 

“I know it did, I know. But you were strong for both of us, so much stronger than me—”

 

She is beyond beautiful, straddling him like a conquering empress. The sun picks up the coppery highlights in her loose hair, setting them ablaze; that hair tumbles down below her shoulders now, and it sways as she begins to rock once more. She's thin — far too thin, wearing the stress of the last month in the sharp clavicles and hip bones that protrude from her golden skin — but they can fix that. He can fix that — _he_ can make it all okay, too.

 

The gash from Snoke’s blade has healed cleanly. It's a pinkish line right across the middle of her throat, slightly raised, and Kyril — he _hates_ it, hates what it means to him.

 

“Take care of me, milaya,” he murmurs, thumbing the scar. “And let me take care of you.”

 

She nods, then throws her head back — giving herself over to the decadent friction between them, to the gloriously slick glide.

 

And what a glory it is, to be Kyril at this moment — on his back in a comfortable bed, the only woman he's ever loved sliding her sopping cleft up and down his length, catching her hot nerve-filled bud on the flared head with each forward pass.

 

“I want to be good for you,” she sighs.

 

He swallows, this throat thick with love and need and relief. “You _are_ —you're my good girl,” he gasps.

 

Taking him in hand, she lifts herself up onto her knees, one hand still on his chest, and brings his cock to her entrance. It's momentous, to Kyril, he needs this more than _anything_ , and he wants nothing more than to let her sink down onto him, but —

 

He chokes out, _“Wait!”_

 

Stilling her with one hand on her hip, he jackknifes up into a seated position and replaces his cock with his hand — working one digit inside, then two. He strokes the plush satiny walls of her cunt, scissoring his fingers in an attempt to open her up for him; his other hand on her spine keeps her close.

 

“We’ve had some trouble with this,” he reminds her, trying not to sound smug.

 

Rey blushes. The pink hue travels all the way down to her breasts — so he has no choice but to chase after it. He takes a tight, dusky nipple into his mouth, tonguing his way around it before he sucks in earnest.

 

She trills, a breathy high-pitched sound that is somehow both a moan _and_ actual words: “Oh my _God_.”

 

And she gets wetter for him, drenched, _so good_ , because he's touching her — getting her ready. He can feel her channel easing open under his ministrations, muscles relaxing and stretching, everything slick and yielding.

 

“I'm on birth control, now,” she mutters. He glances up at her, sees her serious expression, and releases her breast with a wet smacking sound — although he doesn't remove his fingers from her.

 

“So—before—” he starts, then hesitates.

 

Rey shakes her head.

 

“And there wasn't—” God, but this is hard to talk about — hard to focus on right now, when he just wants to fuck her until they're both lost in blissful oblivion, and difficult to verbalize, because he's not sure where they _stand_ on this. Another shake of her head, her mouth downturned. “If there had been…?”

 

“I don't _know_ ,” she confesses, lips quivering in a way that Kyril knows is the precursor to tears.

 

“Okay,” he says, pulling his fingers out of her and wrapping her up in his arms. Because of _course_ he would have wanted her to keep it — but he'd also put her in an impossible situation. If their roles were reversed, and he'd been left with child by a man like Kyril Ren — would he want to be judged for feeling unsure if he wanted that child?

 

Kyril knows he would not.

 

So he kisses her shoulder, the hard bony plane of her sternum, the hollow at the base of her throat, the scar across her neck — there he lingers, kissing it again and again, then in a moment of heady impetuosity, laving at it. Is it bizarre, doing something like this? He isn't certain. But right now he _needs_ the scar to signify something besides his own frailty — wants it to be something that doesn't kill him a little every time he looks at it.

 

“It's okay,” he says, mouthing at the raised line of hard shiny flesh, his hand drifting to down to stroke the scar running along her thigh, “whatever choice you _would_ have made—would've been right.”

 

“Really?” she sobs.

 

“Yes.” He leans back so he can meet her tearful gaze. “Yes. Really.”

 

For a long fraught minute, they stare at each other. Her breathing is loud, clogged, labored, and then — she hiccups, an abrupt little spasm.

 

It's so cute, he can't resist — a grin sneaks its way onto his mouth.

 

“Don't,” she threatens, but another one erupts from her diaphragm, louder this time, and it makes her tight breasts bounce enticingly. She notices his eyes being drawn to the sight — which makes her giggle, softly — which, of course, makes them jiggle again.

 

_God, I love you._

 

“Venya,” she coos, reaching for him.

 

A couple tight strokes — her thin fingers pressing hard into his engorged flesh just how he likes it, she _remembers_ — and she brings him back to her sex, sinking down onto the head with a breathy moan.

 

“О Боже, it's so—it’s even better than I remembered, I missed you so _much_ , milaya,” he babbles, as she rocks herself against him. “Careful, take your time—go slow.”

 

He reclines back onto his elbows, happy to watch her — he's barely inside, at least a good fifteen centimeters of cock still beneath her. Already Rey's folds are spread wide around him; she bites her lip, bearing down, a hitched little gasp escaping every time she takes more of him in.

 

“ _Good_ ,” he utters, panting, spellbound — and the minx has the nerve to smirk at him, so Kyril _has_ to push himself back up, hands on her hips as an anchor, and take her previously unattended breast into his mouth. He nips at the puckered nipple, before leaning her back and sucking on the soft rounded underside — just how _she_ likes, he remembers.

 

“Ah, _fuckIloveyou_ ,” she whines.

 

He really does almost come on the spot, barely inside her. She pushes down another centimeter, two, three, a dozen, then pulses around him, hard. And that — that feels too good. Illegally good. Ruining-him-for-other-women good.

 

“Блядь,” he grinds out, eyes shut. _The forefathers of Communism were Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx—this is all I ever wanted—who published the_ Communist Manifesto _in 1848._

 

“Venya, open your eyes.”

 

She feels like a pillowy sheathe, lush and tight and clutching him with her sateen heat. And yet — it wasn't this difficult to control himself last time, _why_ he is about two seconds away from coming _now_?

 

“Venya.”

 

_The October Uprising of 1917 brought Lenin and the Bolsheviks—I love you—to power in Russia, after the February Revolution—I think your body was made for me—overthrew the autocratic monarchy of Tsar Nicholas the Second._

 

“Venyusha?” She slips down another few centimeters; Kyril does not _dare_ open his eyes.

 

_The Soviet Union was established in—please don't ever leave me—1922._

 

“Please look at me,” she begs, still swaying those beautiful hips. “Please, Venya.”

 

There is nothing he would deny her; he meant it when he said he was her humble servant. Thus, he opens his eyes.

 

“Is it good?” She looks so nervous, eyebrows raised in needy anticipation.

 

“Perfect,” he grunts.

 

Kyril doesn't come but he knows he's _right_ there; he's buried inside her, their bodies flush. She shifts and he can feel her silky moisture dripping down over his balls. He reaches down, swiping his fingers over them before bringing the digits up to his mouth.

 

 _Why did I do that?_ he thinks, as the briny, tangy taste melts like hot butter on his tongue — only driving him closer to his climax.

 

_Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis Dzhugashvili—you taste like you belong to me—on the eighteenth of December, 1878, in the Georgian village of Gori._

 

The flavor of Rey, her sweet cunt taking him so nicely, her body a snug home for his —

 

He pinches the base of his cock, fondling her in the process, and huffs out, “Move your hips, Rey. Please, please bounce on my cock, _please_ —”

 

She does, rising and twisting, and the restrictive pressure of his fingers helps to cool his blood a little — allows him to appreciate the sight of her, working her hardest to move while impaled on his cock.

 

Rey sings out a wanton moan, slides her hands up his chest, tweaking each nipple along the way. The twinge of pleasure-pain makes him buck up into her. She gasps at that, blinking rapidly and spasming from another hiccup. _I love you, I love you, I love you._

 

“Was that—” she huffs.

 

“So good. Are _you_ okay?” he asks, tensed. “Does it hurt?”

 

_Dear God let her like it, please don't say this hurts you, please love me, please love my cock inside you, please want it there forever—_

 

“I’m okay,” Rey whispers. She shakes her head and leans forward, burying her hands in his hair. “It feels—so good, Venya. It just—it's hard to believe how good it feels. Like—like you're everything. Filling me up, all my emptiness—”

 

“I love you,” he proclaims, leaning into her as well.

 

For a while neither moves, just kissing, enjoying the sweet intimacy of this moment.

 

Finally, she picks up where they left off, jerking her hips and riding him. Kyril scoots them back until he's leaning against the the steel-barred headboard, then uses the added stability to bring the hand not gripping his cock to her delicate bud. He begins to rub it, fast and hard.

 

A high-pitched wail is torn from her pretty lips. “Harder, baby, more—”

 

“I've got you,” he soothes. “You like this? You like my cock?”

 

“If I couldn't have you forever, just like this,” she moans, “I don't—don't know— _what_ I'd do.”

 

“You have me, milaya,” he vows. “You're so good to me, my good girl.”

 

What is there to say, after that? His sweet Irenushka takes care of him, and he worships her for it.

 

When they come — sweating, shaking — they come as one. Her body grips him tight, her luscious pussy brings him with her. She keens, high and long and feminine, a stunning sound that he wants to record — wants it as an alarm clock that brings him back into the world each morning. His climax is so intense — balls tingling, dick twitching, spine arching, gut-wrenchingly intense — that his vision whites out for a whole minute, his whole being nothing more than points of contact with hers.

 

Rey lets him come inside her, his good girl, and after, when she settles back into the pillows, she lets him lay his head on her chest and pet her slick folds — lets him push his viscous white spend back inside, when it begins to seep out.

 

“I would have killed ten Snokes for this—for you, for this chance at a life with you,” he declares, in a muted voice. “I would have died for it, too.”

 

“For me?” A dreamy smile lights up her features.

 

“Yes, milaya, for you.”

 

“Because you love me,” she reiterates.

 

Kyril nods, sensing a similarly dopey smile pulling at his own lips. “Because I love you.”

 

“I killed for you too,” she reminds him. “But I don’t regret it. Because I love you too, and they deserved it for hurting you.”

 

She combs her fingers through his hair; Kyril hums at the feeling, twisting his neck so can kiss one of her perfect breasts, then the other.

 

“If you had it all to change—would you? Anything?” He winces as soon as the words are spoken — _why did I ask that? What if her answer is not what I want to hear?_

 

“Not a second of it,” Rey avows, eyes full of fondness and shining down at him. “Not one thing.”

 

“Me neither,” says Kyril, awash in a tide of relief. “Not one thing.”

 

. . .

 

She shaves his patchy beard for him, at some point that morning. He sits on the toilet, head tilted back and hands resting on her hips while she works.

 

When she's finished she leans over to press a chaste kiss against his smooth cheek. He plucks the razor from her hand and tosses it away, then tugs her onto his lap, losing himself in the feeling of a kiss that no longer feels stolen, but earned.

 

He carries her back to the bed, legs folded tight around his waist and their lips locked. She has plenty of time to enjoy his clean-cut face while he kisses and nuzzles a tortuously slow path down to her weeping sex.

 

. . .

 

"Hey,” says Rey, later. They're sipping at matching mugs of sweet, smoky black tea, still lolling around in bed. Hours ago, Kyril made bacon and blini — the real deal, with eggs. Rey still has that drowsy, sated feeling that comes with a full belly.

 

He's resting his head on that belly now, completely absorbed in a battered old copy of _The Master and Margarita_. That, along with the _Anna Karenina_ in her hands and several other books stacked upon her dresser, were procured by Kenobi after she’d suggested that the separation from Kyril was proving difficult for her, only a day after arriving — in the hopes she could be allowed to visit him. She didn’t get Kyril, but she did get an armful of Russian novels.

 

He's a nice old man, that Deputy Marshal Kenobi.

 

Kyril marks his spot in the book with a finger, and rolls his eyes up towards her face. He takes a sip of tea as Rey, leaning back into her nest of pillows, announces:

 

“I want babies.”

 

She grins a little when he spits his drink out all over the t-shirt and pajamas that Kenobi's partner, a spry older woman who introduced herself as Deputy Marshal Maz Kanata, dropped off after breakfast. The rest of his new clothes now reside in the dresser — beside hers.

 

Kyril lifts his eyebrows, saying nothing.

 

“Someday,” she amends, thrilling at his slow, easy smile. “It scares me a little, the—thinking about, y'know, messing up. As a parent. But I want to try, with you—I want us to do _better_. I think we can, and—I want babies. Lots of them. Ours, or adopted. A big family.”

 

And Rey, something inside her twists up painfully tight even as she’s speaking — a complicated boazar made of love and fear and regret.

 

_Can I be better than my parents were, whoever they were? Can I protect my children, like they could not? Will I be a good mother, without really having had one of my own?_

 

_Can Kyril be a good father to our children?_

 

She can't be sure. But never — _never_ — has she been so willing to find out, than with Kyril. She's never even considered the _possibility_ before, but now —

 

Well, Rey — she thought about it a lot, while Kyril was in the hospital.

 

“Good,” he sighs, and Rey _is_ certain that she hears relief in his voice, now. “I know—that fear, I feel it too. But—I still want that.” He's looking at her so rapturously, his gaze so intent. “I want that with _you_.”

 

She nods, emboldened by how well this is going. “I want them to be American, but—they should know your culture, as well. They should speak English and Russian.”

 

“Yes.” An eager nod. “Yes, that would make me—very, very happy.”

 

“Will you teach me how to speak it?” she asks.

 

He laughs, truly laughs, with joy. “Of course, beloved.”

 

“And you’ll give me beautiful babies?”

 

He takes a bracing breath. “As many as you want.”

 

“We—we’ll be good parents,” she says, as much to assure herself as him. “We’ll read all the books, and we’ll be a team. We’ll give our beautiful babies really happy lives.”

 

“Yes,” agrees Kyril. “We will."

 

"And—if we make mistakes, which we probably will—we’ll admit it, right?”

 

He nods, eyebrows raised, looking besotted. Rey doesn't know if she's ever been more in love with him. She hesitates, then decides — she's going to build a _life_ with this man. She needs to get comfortable asking for what she needs.

 

So she implores, faintly, “You'll—still tell me I'm good?”

 

“You could never be anything else to me, but—I will. I will tell you _all_ the time. You'll be tired of hearing it,” he says.

 

“Never.” She brushes a stray lock of sable hair from his brow, then traces that old scar down his cheek with her thumb.

 

He rolls over slightly, and presses a kiss to her sweater-clad breast, looking up at her with eyes full of promise.

 

“Never ever,” she swears.

 

. . .

 

Lunch is canned soup and saltines.

 

“It’s no Rassolnik,” Rey mutters, hunched over the stove, feeling self-conscious as she stirs the thick noodles and paltry chicken chunks round and round in the yellow broth, “but—”

 

“It smells delicious,” Kyril assures her, nuzzling her neck, arms banded around her waist. He sways slightly, an almost dance, and her body moves with him.

 

After a few minutes of stirring and swaying, some classical music Kyril found on the radio playing quietly in the background, he notes, as an afterthought:

 

“Chicken soup from a can, my first _true_ American meal.”

 

“Hey!” Rey cries, in mock-offense. But she's already chuckling, and when she tips her head back to catch that playful glint in his eye, the chuckle bubbles up into genuine laughter.

 

Blushing, she says, “I'll—learn how to make it from scratch, for you.”

 

“We can learn together,” he suggests, pressing his hips closer, arms tightening around her, face lying on her shoulder so his breath tickles her collarbone.

 

_I love you, I love you, I love you._

 

“Even better.” Rey hopes he can hear the sentiment in her voice, but then it strikes her — _why not just say it?_ It's Kyril. She's safe with him. So she does. “I love you.”

 

“I hope so—you're stuck with me now.”

 

“You're stuck with me, too,” she points out.

 

“Guess that makes me a lucky man, doesn't it?”

 

She smiles, and urges him to resume his swaying with a little shimmy of her hips.

 

He does.

 

. . .

 

“Will we ever _see_ you again?” Finn asks, sounding dejected.

 

Rey adjusts the phone between her ear and her shoulder so that she can peer over her bent knees, where Kyril is deeply engrossed in his current endeavor: painting her toes a glittering shade of emerald green. They've napped all afternoon, then ordered in for dinner, and when she admitted, around a mouthful of hot salty pepperoni pizza, how nervous this phone call was making her — he'd asked how he could help.

 

So Rey put him to work.

 

She chews her lip for a second. Leaving Finn and Poe behind is, by far, her biggest regret about accepting this whole witness protection deal — but she's put off this conversation for long enough.

 

“I'm not supposed to ever have contact with anyone from my old life, but… Give it a couple years, let us get oriented,” she hedges.

 

“There it is again— _us_ ,” Poe grouses, from the second phone, the one in his and Finn's bedroom.

 

“Honey—” warns Finn.

 

“Don’t _honey_ me! She jets off to Russia, comes back early and broken-hearted with a black eye, basically _moves_ into Luke's place without telling us, disappears the same day his house is on the local news for being involved in some kind of gangbang shootout gorefest— _they found fingers lying on the kitchen floor, Finn_ —sends the FBI over here to collect all her stuff, and now, what? Bye bye Rey, off to live in the Bible Belt with some _stranger_?”

 

Poe’s blunt skepticism, his harsh words — he can't fool Rey; she's known him for too long. She heaves a tired sigh. Kyril looks up from his task with a raised eyebrow.

 

 _Nothing_ , she mouths, and shakes her head, threading her fingers through his hair. “I’m okay, Poe, really. I'm sorry I didn't keep you more in the loop, things just—happened really quickly. But—I'll write to you! I've always wanted a pen pal.”

 

She snorts at the sound of Poe's theatrical groan, then sobers when Finn asks, “Are you allowed to _call_? Can you? At least once a week, maybe? This is all so crazy Rey, I just—”

 

“Yes,” she coughs, guilt seeping into her nerves, making her fingers twitch. “Weekly phone calls. Yes, absolutely.”

 

Kyril silently kisses the top of her foot, before shifting towards the other and continuing his work.

 

“Good. Okay. That's—something, anyway,” Finn mutters.

 

Serious now, Poe clarifies, “We can come visit in a couple years?”

 

“I'd really like that,” she tells them. “Holdo has hinted we'll be headed somewhere out west, so Poe—you can finally wear your cowboy boots in the context they were meant for.”

 

Rey can _hear_ his eyes rolling through the connection. “Don't tease. We both know how good I look in those,” he sniffs.

 

“We really _will_ miss you, Rey,” says Finn, earnestly.

 

“Yeah, who's gonna pay your third of the rent?” Poe jokes.

 

“Your students will miss you too,” Finn continues.

 

“Well,” she reasons, blowing a kiss to Kyril when he pantomimes a dramatic ta-da gesture at her viridescent toenails, “I learned from you, so now they'll get their skills straight from the source.”

 

“Hmph.” Poe is audibly unimpressed by this.

 

“You're sweet,” Finn drawls. “Just tell us—the guy, this guy you're running away with… Is he good to you?”

 

Kyril has flopped onto the bed beside her, nose once again buried in _The Master and Margarita_. One of his big bearpaw hands rests on her tummy, rubbing slow circles there.

 

Rey swallows. “The best,” she chokes out.

 

“Well—love works in mysterious ways, I guess,” he sighs, clearly a concession. “Take care of yourself, okay? We love you. Never hesitate to call—I don't care _what_ the stupid FBI says.”

 

“Yeah!” cries Poe. “Fuck the police. Also, what he said—about missing you and loving you and all that. We really do, darlin’. Be safe?”

 

“I will, I will. I love you guys,” she utters, wishing she could at least have one last hug from her best friends.

 

It takes a few rounds of increasingly emotional goodbyes, but eventually they hang up. When she sets the phone back in the cradle, Kyril peeks at her over the top of his novel.

 

“It’ll be hard for you—without them,” he comments, hand still soothing her. A frown tugs at his lush mouth, but he waits, gaze unwavering — the very picture of patience.

 

“Yes,” she agrees, bobbing her head. “It will be. But—they’ll come visit, later. Is that—okay?”

 

His frown deepens. “You don’t need to ask me that—they’re your friends.” She shrugs, feeling for some reason like they’re on shaky ground, until he adds: “Besides—I'd like to meet them. Buy them a drink, to thank them for being there all those years, when I could not.”

 

 _You really do love me, don’t you?_ Her eyes begin to sting, hot tears pricking at them, throat tight and stomach a hard knot.

 

“You're gonna make me cry, Ven.”

 

“Sometimes, Irenushka—”

 

He climbs up her body until his face is level with hers, then dips down, his lips landing on her cheek, then her jaw —

 

Rey thinks she knows where he’s headed — to the scar. When he licked it earlier, _God_ , how it made her body soar, like he was rewriting her pain with his tongue —

 

“Crying is necessary,” he says, once again kneading the hard raised line of skin with those full lips.

 

Her tears spill over, down her cheeks, into his hair. When he finally finds his way back up, kissing her so delicately, she cups his face in her hands — and discovers it is just as wet as her own.

 

. . .

 

They fall asleep that night just as they woke in the morning — warm bodies entangled, holding each other tightly.

 

 _This was the first day of my life_ , Kyril decides, his last thought before her snuffled dulcet snoring lulls him into a dreamless sleep.

 

. . .

 

“Krav Maga is mostly about self defense. It was invented by Israeli army,” she informs Kyril the next morning, as he squares up with her on the squishy mat in the rudimentary basement gym.

 

He scoffs. “I know how to defend myself.”

 

“I've _seen_ you fight, Venyusha,” she teases, “You ‘defend’ yourself like a raccoon fighting over a dumpster. You need a teacher.”

 

“ _Енот?_ The vermin that eats trash?” cries Kyril, indignant.

 

Rey purses her lips to one side of her face in an attempt to keep from laughing. “You don't have any finesse, you just brawl!”

 

“I don't need finesse,” Kyril sniffs, but at the same time he glances down at his biceps, a little less burly and his torso, a little less thick than they were a month ago. He scowls.

 

“Finesse can be useful—finesse can help you take down a man twice your size.”

 

“You think I didn't do that in prison?” he posits, stepping so close to her she has to tilt her head back. Rey squints her eyes and wrinkles her nose up at him; he stoops down until their faces are inches apart.

 

He's close enough that she can catalog all of her favorite moles on his face: the one under his flared right nostril — a lovely specimen; the one above his arched left eyebrow — exemplary. And her favorite, the one that dots his right cheek, beside his strong nose. She reaches up to stroke it with her thumb, and he sighs, leaning into the touch.

 

“Milaya,” he warns.

 

“ _Veniamin_. I love you. I _can't_ have you fighting at the expense of your own well-being. If the Bratva comes for us, if they _find_ us somehow—” She flounders at the thought of more violence, more bloodshed, feeling perilously close to tears.

 

“We'll kill them,” he murmurs.

 

“But what if _you're_ killed in the process?” she croaks.

 

For a long weighty moment Kyril stares down at her, pensive and perceptive — studying her, in that way he does. Finally, he leans in, a hand coming to rest gently on her hip, and presses his lips to hers. Rey sags into his body, reveling in the warm, unspoken flow of love and need and trust that passes between them in the span of that tender kiss.

 

“Okay,” he says at last, leaning his forehead against hers. “Teach me, мой волчонок.”

 

. . .

 

Some of the lower-ranking members of the Brighton Beach Solntsevskaya, Bratok and Shestyorkin, end up accepting plea bargains, when presented with the glut of evidence the FBI has on them. They receive lessened prison or parole sentences.

 

Not Diomedes, though. He, along with several of his Vori, plead ‘not guilty’ to all charges at the arraignment hearing and thus — the games begin.

 

The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York — a hard-nosed prosecutor named Mace Windermere — shows up at the apartment on a blustery Tuesday morning, several days after Kyril is released, with the purpose of taking his official deposition. Despite his exceptionally Anglican name, he speaks with a Chattanooga twang and warns Kyril right from the jump ‘not to bullshit a bullshitter.’

 

So he doesn't — waiving his right to have his own lawyer present, he relates the entire sordid saga from his East Berlin years up until that Tuesday. Windermere listens carefully, rubbing his bald head more than a few times in what Kyril supposes is contemptuous disbelief. They don't exactly get along in the hours that follow; Windermere clearly has his reservations about Kyril's morality, Kyril doesn't like the man's casual manner of referring to his bitter, bloody past.

 

But for the most part, Windermere keeps his own council, is unfailingly kind to Rey — fielding the endless questions she has about the legal process with patience and a charismatic grin — and gets his job done, preparing Kyril for the trial.

 

It's from Windermere that they learn that Artem Bogdanovich Hux did not survive the beating Rey administered — she'd been unsure, too afraid of drawing suspicion to inquire in the aftermath. Windermere relates law enforcement's rough idea that either he or Rey committed this deed, although it would seem they haven't turned up sufficient evidence to warrant an arrest.

 

Kyril sheds no tears for Hux — neither does Rey. The man made his choices, as all men must. And after? They must be lived with.

 

 _Or died with_ , Kyril supposes, _in Hux's case._

 

_. . ._

 

Days pass in a mostly idyllic blur of sex, sleep, training, and eating.

 

Kyril learns small things about Rey — she, like Kyril, enjoys listening to the radio while she's cooking or cleaning. He suspects, also like himself, that this is a habit she picked up during her lonely years, her bad years.

 

She bites her nails. Her right hook is lethal. She's picked up a crossword puzzle habit from Luke, so he sets that part of the newspaper aside for her every day. For all his teasing over her ignorance of Russian culture, she's actually very well read, and she likes to share passages from whatever book she's reading, so they can appreciate or deride them together.

 

Kyril discovers things about himself during this time, as well. For example: he loves when she does this — likes feeling included in what is such a solitary act, likes to lay in the bed next to her, touching her soft skin, and share snippets from his book too.

 

 _I didn't have a birthday cake or learn to swim or ride a bike until I was sixteen,_ she tells him in a fragile whisper one night when they are curled up together in the dark — and if all the other tiny fractured pieces of her childhood hadn't already broken his heart, he thinks that one would. Whenever she lets him in, whenever she shares those painful shards with him, he pulls her closer, closer, closer and tells her just how much she means to him.

 

Other things:

 

He likes living together, likes how their lives fall into a steady routine. Likes how strong she brews their coffee in the morning, likes how she beams sleepily at him over breakfast, likes how tendrils of her hair fall out of her bun, likes fucking whenever they feel like it, likes their life, likes the person he is when he's around her.

 

They quarrel once in a while about little things — Rey likes her steak so rare it’s still bloody, Kyril prefers his medium well and cannot help reminding her of the risk she’s taking by eating what amounts to raw meat. She gets annoyed with him if he pulls his punches when they’re practicing Krav Maga. They both fall quiet when they’re tired, which leads to a couple misunderstandings about whether they’re in a fight or in need of a nap.

 

But together — _together_ , Kyril marvels — they navigate their way through these tiffs, and usually find themselves laughing or making love or both by the time they’ve settled their grievances.

 

He feels lighter on his feet than he ever has, like his soul has been taken to the dry cleaners, like the ink in his dermis has been siphoned off — the tattoos’ heavy weight seems to have become a more tolerable load to bear, by Rey's side. It often surprises him, how easy it is to laugh when they're together — like their first real night together, when he hit his head on the dacha's wooden ceiling. Or when they had the snowball fight. Or these days, simply teasing each other while they go about their lives. It's easy, second-nature — like breathing.

 

He _likes_ thinking about the future now — he feels hopeful, which is a new and unfamiliar state of being for Kyril. They talk about it often, speculating about where they're going to live, how they'll find work, what kind of lives will they create for the children they’ll bring into the world, what kind of home they want —

 

That one, at least, is simple enough. A little dacha, somewhere remote, they agree.

 

In a forest, if possible.

 

. . .

 

He tolerates the nightly teatime visits from Luke — they're awkward, filled with half-hearted attempts at small talk, and too many long leaden silences.

 

It takes weeks for Rey to admit that she's upset with his uncle for not disclosing what he knew about her past. And when she does finally break down one night, after Luke shrugs off yet another of her questions about his part in the confrontation, she waits until he leaves before sputtering out a confession of her fury to Kyril, red-faced and tearful.

 

“He should have _warned_ me,” she hisses, spitting mad — utterly gorgeous. “He should have told me about my parents, before I left for Russia.”

 

Kyril holds her, of course, and promises her she's not wrong to feel slighted.

 

The next night, when she asks Kyril to go down to the gym before Luke comes over, he happily complies.

 

He runs on the treadmill, lifts weights, shadowboxes — he's slowly putting on muscle again, torso filling out, spine once more hidden and arms bulging. There's a new sense of pride he feels at that — not based on his ability to win a prison yard fight, not exactly vanity, but rather an awareness that Rey likes his body, appreciates him like this.

 

So maybe it’s a little bit vanity. _Can I be blamed?_ he thinks, watching himself in the mirror during his last set of curls. _Is it wrong to want her to want me, to want her to feel safe with me?_

 

He eventually comes back up to the apartment, escorted by the tiny but tough Deputy Marshal Kanata — who must be in her late fifties, at least, and who flirts with him shamelessly for the entire elevator ride —

 

And when he steps into the apartment, Luke is not there.

 

“He won't be visiting as often,” Rey says, biting her lip. “I just—need some time.”

 

“If that's what you want,” he nods, pulling her towards the shower, trying not to gloat — trying not to confuse his pride in her with his satisfaction that he doesn’t have to see his damned uncle every night.

 

. . .

 

Some mornings she wakes him up with a gentle peck on the lips, some mornings she wakes him up — after she asked him, haltingly, if she could — with those same pliant lips wrapped around his morning erection, her hot little mouth suckling him back to consciousness.

 

Some mornings they wake at the same, and trade loving words, even more loving touches.

 

Some mornings he wakes before she does, and he watches her sleep — snoring, drooling a little if he really tired her out the night before, often draped on top of him. She's a barnacle in her sleep, something he gently ribs her for, enjoying how she blushes and throws back a flippant, “Your _face_ is a barnacle!”

 

Some mornings he rains down kisses over her breasts and belly until she opens her eyes — always so _green_ when she's just woken up — and nods, rubbing his scalp with sleepy fingers. Then he lowers his mouth to her lovely cunt, and feasts.

 

Some mornings they just cuddle, and eventually she makes them coffee and he fries some eggs, and he scans the paper for news of the conflict in Chechnya, rubbing the feet that she rests in his lap while she does the crossword.

 

He treasures all of these mornings — each and every one.

 

. . .

 

The weeks march on. February, a short shivery wisp of a month, slips away without their even noticing it. Half of March disappears before he is told the date that he will be brought to the courthouse in Brooklyn.

 

The day arrives. He and Luke travel to Brooklyn in a windowless van, driven by Kanata and the deputy marshal assigned to Luke, a tall, taciturn man whom Kanata introduces as Grady Bellamy. The man winces when she says this, shoves an excessively hairy hand into Kyril’s, and while shaking it, asks to be called ‘Chewie’.

 

The drive takes two hours; both of them are conducted in stilted, frosty silence. Luke, he's sure, is less than thrilled with Kyril and Rey's relationship. And despite whatever his uncle has said to Holdo to help him gain immunity and witness protection — he still doesn't have much to say to the man, after he's mumbled out a reticent _'thanks_.’

 

This is still the man who refused to come help his mother, still the man who strolled into East Berlin telling him how to live his life, still the man who lectured him on the evils of his motherland at a time when what he really needed was an uncle who cared more about _him_ than the ideals of the West.

 

When they exit the van — Kyril and Luke disguised with baseball caps, high-collared wool coats, and sunglasses — the press is already waiting for them on the steps of the Emanuel Celler U.S. Courthouse. The building is four stories of colorless granite and glass, and entrance is completely obscured by the flashing lights and pressing bodies, pressing questions.

 

Word has spread about the mysterious Russian-American gangster and his famous boxer uncle, who are to be the lynchpin of U.S. Attorney Windermere’s case against the Brighton Beach Solntsevskaya Bratva.

 

“Skywalker!” they call out, “Is it true they took three of your fingers? Is it true that you were planning a comeback? Does this ruin your plans? Is it true you're going to be on _The Oprah Winfrey Show_?”

 

“Solo! The Russian government says you should be returned to native soil to stand trial for your crimes there, what do you say to that?”

 

“Did you plan two this from the beginning?”

 

“Was it all an elaborate sting?”

 

“Who killed Ivan Snoke? Who killed Artem Hux?”

 

“Don't say a _motherfuckin’_ thing—just get inside,” growls Windermere under his breath, meeting them at the top of the stairs. They’re escorted by courthouse police through the echoing corridors to a small conference room adjacent to the courtroom; Kanata strides beside them the entire way, one tiny wrinkled hand hovering over her pistol. Chewie brings up the rear.

 

Luke testifies and is cross-examined first; Kyril's hands sweat copiously for the entire three hours he must sit in his comfortable padded armchair with nothing to do but wait. When Luke returns to the conference room, he looks more exhausted than usual and merely shakes his head as he drops himself into a chair far from Kyril's.

 

And then? It is Kyril's turn. Are there other witnesses that day, sitting around the walnut table with him and Luke? He cannot remember, by the time he swears — tattooed hand laid flat upon a Bible — to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

 

Taking in the courtroom, the Cherry wood-paneling, the giant slab of white-veined black marble that covers an entire wall behind the judge's bench, the golden seal hanging from it which displays some official crest and the American flag hanging in the corner — Kyril is reminded of the many, many official state buildings his mother dragged him through as a young boy. It has the same level of gravitas, and the same dearth of warmth.

 

_Are you proud of me, mamushka? I hope you are._

 

She was hoping to incite a love in him for the never-ending ballet of politics, he recalls, as he seats himself in the witness box and takes a moment to study Judge Jinn, a stern-looking bearded man with an uncharacteristic grey ponytail flowing down his back.

 

Of course, that hadn't exactly worked out the way Leia had hoped.

 

 _I've been in this room before_. Kyril imagines the seal a little differently, the warm lighting to be harsh fluorescent bulbs, the flag to bear a red field and golden hammer and sickle rather than its stars and stripes. _With my mother and on my own._

 

 _Only this time,_ he consoles himself, _I am not the son of a diplomat, nor am I sitting in the defendant's seat. I am not on trial._

 

He still feels as though he is one probing question away from vomiting all over the suit Kanata has provided for him.

 

But he follows Windermere’s lead, setting aside his personal feelings to do the job he’s come here to do: he testifies, answering each of Windermere's queries in the calm and measured tone they practiced, elaborating or clarifying whenever Jinn demands it.

 

He is cross-examined. Kyril comes to the conclusion, after the fact, that it is probably the worst hour of his post-Snoke life. He is raked over the coals; all of his crimes — on record and alleged — are laid out before the jury in order to cast doubt upon his account of the meeting, and of Snoke's dealings with the Brighton Beachers. He clenches his jaw so tightly he can hear his teeth grinding, but he answers the defense lawyer's questions truthfully and figures the jury can decide for themselves whether to believe him or not.

 

He’s done his part.

 

Diomedes glowers at him from his seat at the defense team's table, outfitted in a prison-orange jumpsuit and looking ten years older than the last time Kyril saw him. But he is not a man that Kyril fears; there has only ever been one man in his life that he feared, and that man is dead.

 

And really, Diomedes’ hateful glare is barely even enough to stir Kyril from the pit of self-loathing into which he has sunk, into which this cross-examination has led him.

 

 _You're no Snoke_ , he thinks, staring back at the man without blinking. _You're not even a Hux._

 

_You haven't survived a soviet winter in decades, you've never seen the inside of a Russian prison._

 

_You don't have the faintest clue what it means to be a monster._

 

_. . ._

 

On the drive back to Stamford that evening, cruising along Interstate Highway 95 North at about one hundred thirty kilometers per hour, someone tries to run them off the road.

 

It starts when a black Lincoln Continental — low and wide with tinted windows — roars up the left-hand lane beside them. When it draws nose-and-nose with their windowless van, it veers into them, forcing Kanata to swerve into the right lane, brakes squealing deafeningly and Luke's surprised grunt resounding inside the vehicle. They come harrowingly close to a fatal collision with a concrete transport truck before Kanata manages to correct the van.

 

Kyril’s first instinct is not to protect Kanata or Luke or Chewie or himself, not to help right the van by grabbing hold of the steering wheel, his reaction is this:

 

Heart hammering in his throat, gut twisting itself up — he reaches for a gun holstered at his ribs, one that is longer there.

 

 _Why am I like this?_ he wonders, as Kanata steers them smoothly back into the central lane. _Have I changed at all, if my first instinct is retaliation? Violence?_

 

As if he didn't already hate himself enough, after the afternoon he’s had — all his old sins thrown back in his face, twelve jurors staring at him with something akin to revulsed pity, Windermere’s objections constantly overruled by Judge Jinn — this is the icing on the cake.

 

_I am still a violent man. Some part of me may always have that capacity, that need for control, that lust._

 

Luke notices Kyril reach for the gun, and when he meets his uncle's eyes, Luke's brows are knitted, a stern look of censure in his tightly pressed lips — but keeps his thoughts, whatever they may be, to himself.

 

The Lincoln isn't finished, however: twice more its driver swings the heavy car into their van, and twice more Kanata — ever the professional — avoids hitting any surrounding cars, then calmly brings them back to their lane.

 

“Ooh-wee, this asshole really knows how to _party_!” she whoops, unphased, even as the Lincoln rams them for a fourth time.

 

Chewie does his best to get a look at the driver, but ends up snarling, “Bastards have the back windows tinted as well—can’t see a thing.”

 

The Lincoln falls back, choosing to ram into their rear bumper a few times, but as they continue to speed up the highway the traffic grows thicker, heralding their entrance into the Stamford metro area, and thankfully — the Lincoln drops back, farther and farther behind them, until it is no longer in sight, hidden in the sea of cars on the highway.

 

Kanata pulls over at the next rest stop, waiting to see if the Lincoln will follow them into the parking lot, but the coast seems to be clear; the driver clearly believes their point has been made.

 

“Well,” says Luke with a weary sigh, once they reach the apartment building safely, “Guess that could’ve gone worse.”

 

It takes every iota of restraint in Kyril’s body not punch his uncle in the face. Instead he shoots him a dark look, then returns to his tortured self recrimination. They enter the elevator with Kanata and Chewie in silence, and when he turns in the hallway towards his and Rey’s apartment, he does not say anything to Luke, merely nods a curt dismissal to the deputy marshals, and ducks inside without looking back.

 

. . .

 

It's been an awful day for Rey.

 

She and Kyril woke up together to the strident ringing of her alarm clock long before the sun rose, a harsh change from the lackadaisical, kiss-filled first moments they usually share. She made coffee while he showered, and they ate breakfast silently, Kyril’s mind clearly elsewhere. There was barely time for them to wake up let alone for him to kiss her — which is what she _really_ wanted more than anything before he left for Brooklyn, but his tense, tight-lipped bent made her nervous to ask — and then Kanata was there at the door with Luke and Chewie in tow, ready to whisk Kyril away for his big courtroom moment.

 

And then she was alone, in a quiet studio apartment that suddenly felt as big and hollow and desolate as a deserted fortress.

 

All day she has fluttered from activity to activity — tidying, cleaning, baking chocolate chip cookies, showering just for the hell of it, attempting to read and giving up after no more than thirty seconds, and finally, jogging on the treadmill for an unprecedented two hours — just to tire out her overactive imagination.

 

Rey showers again, when she returns to the apartment, and she tries mashing the heel of her hand against her clit, hard and furious, in a ploy to distract herself. But when she closes her eyes, all she can see is Kyril lying mangled on a Brighton Beach kitchen floor. It kills her arousal before she can even stoke it.

 

_What if someone hurts him, on the way to Brooklyn or in the courthouse? What if he’s killed? What if he’s in a coma at this very moment? What if he never opens his eyes or speaks again, and I didn’t have the guts to just ask him to kiss me before he left? What if they find out what I did to that Hux man, and they arrest me while he’s gone?_

 

_What if he never comes back?_

 

She towels off, gets dressed. Lingers by the window like maybe he'll be standing down on the sidewalk below, Lloyd Dobler-style with a boom box lifted above his head.

 

There's nothing but the swishing of passing cars on wet pavement, and the grey gloom that eases a rainy day into a rainy night.

 

Ultimately, Rey gives in to her anxiety and climbs back into bed, curled up and rocking herself, sometime around four o’clock. She cries — eyes glued to her green toenails, wishing fervently for his strong arms around her.

 

 _Why am I like this? Why am I so weak?_ she asks herself, again and again — but the fear will not abate, not until he stumbles into the apartment a little after seven, looking exhausted and annoyed.

 

And now — now that he’s here, his body once again as big and hulking as it was on the day that they met, seemingly taking up half the space in the cluttered studio, she cannot seem to make her throat work.

 

“Ven,” she gasps.

 

Kyril glances at her. She's still under the covers, staring at him, willing him to come kiss her. He sighs heavily, sheds his coat and his suit jacket, then crosses to the window. He folds in on himself, leaning on the sill, and peers out at the dark winter evening through the cheap curtains.

 

He looks — defeated.

 

“How—how was it?” She doesn’t raise her voice above a whisper, but his eyes cut to her, sharp and harried. Climbing out of bed, she takes one step towards him — his shoulders hunch up even closer to his ears, so she changes course and fills the kettle with water instead.

 

After a time, he grunts, “Fine.”

 

_No, no, no — don’t block me out, not when I need you. Not when I was so scared for you._

 

Kyril keeps his back to her, staring out at the fire escape, and below it, the slushy streets of Stamford, shining with ice and rain under the street lamps.

 

She sets the kettle on the stove, lights the burner with a match. Haltingly, she suggests, “Do you—want to go spar, downstairs? I can ask Deputy Keno—”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh,” she squeaks, and turns back to the stove, blinking back her tears. “Do you—want to eat something? I made some cook—”

 

“No,” he huffs, with a minute shake of his head. Every muscle in his back is taut. Rey thinks her heart breaks just a little bit when she hears him sniffle softly, catches him wiping his cheeks with the back of his hand.

 

“Venya,” she cries, exasperated, “Please, I don't know what to _do_ —I just want to help. Please—look at me? Let me help?”

 

“That lawyer, he dragged up every last fucking skeleton,” he bites out, deep voice strangled and wavering, “every sin, every rumor—he reminded me why I don't fucking deserve any of this. And—someone tried to run us off the road, on the way home. We—we’ll never be—”

 

He doesn’t turn from the window as he speaks, almost as if this confession is easier to make to the pane of glass and the quiet city street beyond than it is to say to her.

 

Rey feels her chin wobble, a pout pulling at her lips, a hard ache in her chest.

 

“Oh,” she repeats, a whisper this time. Unsure what to do, she stands and stares at his broad back. _Look at me._ She brings a painful hangnail on her left pinky to her lips, and tears at it with her front teeth. _Look at me._ She wants — what does she want? She wants Kyril to turn around, to acknowledge that she’s here in the room, to share his pain with her, to let her carry this burden. _Look at me, look at me, look at me._

 

She wants him to stop trying to be some stereotypically stoic alpha male about this, about whatever’s bothering him, when she knows him better than that.

 

So she stomps a lap around the apartment, angrily straightening a pile of books, adjusting his coat on the hook behind the door, slamming the bathroom door behind her when she storms inside, then turning to storm right back out again.

 

He’s still brooding, back to her and hunched over. The kettle begins to whistle; she rushes to the stove to take it off the flame.

 

“Veniamin,” she says, in as even a tone as possible. He shrugs, a moody jerking motion of one shoulder, but makes no other response.

 

She sucks in a deep, irritated breath through her lips, and blows it her nostrils. _“That’s enough!”_

 

That makes him whirl around, startled. He looks like a mess, like a man who has been failing at surreptitiously crying in front of his girlfriend, like a man who has forgotten how many times he’s told said girlfriend that she could cry as much as she needed. Like he has forgotten how many times they have cried _together_.

 

“Fine, I’ll go.” He swallows thickly, rising and moving towards the door.

 

 _“No!”_ she shouts, and shoots out a hand to stop him. “No. Please—look at me.”

 

He won’t. His gaze is stuck on his shoes, although he doesn’t try to remove her hand. For an achingly long minute, she stands her ground, her grasp firm on his thick forearm, waiting for him to obey.

 

“I’m not good enough for you,” Kyril mutters. His brow furrows, and he brings his eyes to her.

 

It nearly leaves her speechless, the doubt and fear she finds festering there. _Unacceptable_ , thinks Rey— _I cannot let you see yourself this way._

 

“No,” she refutes, shaking her head, stroking up and down his arm. “Nuh-uh. Take off your clothes.”

 

Kyril lets out a frustrated huff. “I'm not really in the mood to—”

 

“ _Venya_ ,” she insists. “This isn’t about sex. Well, it’s not only about sex. Take. Off. Your. Clothes.”

 

His dark eyes follow a trail from her eyes down her body, then up to the hand still holding onto him. Slowly, far too slowly, he reaches for his belt. Rey nods, a victorious shiver running through her, and releases his arm.

 

His white collared shirt, untucked and unbuttoned, comes off first, the simple white t-shirt underneath follows, his belted trousers are dropped to his ankles and stepped out of after he toes off his shoes, and finally — his dark socks go, one warm hand on Rey’s hip to steady himself as he tugs them off one at a time.

 

“Underwear?” he asks, mood not exactly lightened but obviously inquisitive as to what Rey has in mind.

 

She shrugs. “If you want.”

 

He drops his briefs, then stands before her — hands fisted by his side, naked, vulnerable, nearly vibrating with anticipation. “Well?”

 

“This church,” she breathes, reaching out and running her fingers over his tensed abdomen. “Tell me what it means.”

 

“You already know.”

 

She clicks her tongue. “Tell me again.”

 

“I am a thief, a criminal, and a prisoner,” he grits out, watching her fingers trace the curved outline of each onion dome. He sucks in a harsh breath when she brushes over the line of skulls that serves as the church's foundation, down near the sharp cut of his Iliac Crest.

 

“But it's also your faith, isn't it?” she whispers, glancing up at him. He nods wordlessly.

 

“The eyes?”

 

“I am an enforcer,” he snaps, monotone.

 

“Enforcer of what?”

 

“The ponyatiya, the—understanding. The thieves’ code of honor.”

 

“Well,” she shoots back, “you switched codes. People do it all the time. And you had your reasons.”

 

He gives a wry snort, traps her hand between his and his chest, where his newest tattoos lay. “Yes, and those  _reasons_ left me with these _permanent_ insults—traitor and snitch. Which is what I _am_ , Rey.”

 

Rey rubs the marred skin with her fingers.

 

“But that's not the only reason you have them, is it? You also got those because you killed Snoke—to free yourself. Do you regret that?”

 

“No,” he says. “Never.”

 

“You _betrayed_ the others for the same reason,” she points out. “You wouldn't be free now if you hadn't.”

 

Yet another sullen shrug.

 

“The rose?” she asks.

 

“Turning eighteen in prison.”

 

“ _Survived_ prison at eighteen,” she corrects. “My big strong survivor.”

 

Something softens in his eyes. He leans towards her, just a bit, squeezing the hand he still holds against his pectoral. And when she asks, in her gentlest tone, “The knife?” — he doesn't snap out an answer right away.

 

He just gazes at her. Rey stares back; _he_ told her there was no more rush. She can afford to be patient.

 

“The fight with the Tambovskaya on the inside, and the three men I killed,” he murmurs, at last. The hard line of his mouth mellows — not a smile by any means, but no longer a scowl.

 

“Loyalty,” she notes, nodding. “First to the Bratva, and Snoke. And now—to me. Right?”

 

“Yes, but—” He cuts himself off, working his jaw.

 

“Say it—whatever it is, you'll hurt me more if you _don't_ say it,” she coaxes.

 

“How can you trust me? My loyalty? That lawyer—”

 

“Because you made the right choice,” she interrupts. “You chose _me_ , you chose to find a new purpose. And because—” she steps closer, so that her feet are inside his, no space between her clothed body and his naked one, “—I _know_ that you love me.”

 

He grunts and nods, before nuzzling his nose against her cheek. _There you are_ , she crows, to herself. _There's my lover._

 

“The stars?” asks Rey, sliding her bare foot up Kyril's calf until she can tap his kneecap with her toes.

 

“I kneel to no man, only God.”

 

“And me,” she says, as she slips her hand free from his clutch, stroking the rough bullet wound scar — and all the other scars — along his ribs. “You'll get on your knees for _me_ , won't you Venyusha?”

 

“Yes,” he growls.

 

“These.” She runs her fingertips along the Cyrillic axioms inked into his forearms and biceps, then taps the hooded executioner on his inner bicep. “And this.”

 

“Things I thought were true—and a murder I thought was necessary,” he sighs.

 

“I can't change these. They're here to remind you that you strayed—you’re _human_ , and you didn't always choose wisely. You made mistakes. You'll probably make more. But Venya, when you look at them just remember—”

 

She rises on her tiptoes to nuzzle his cheek as he did hers.

 

“I already knew that. My eyes are wide open, okay? I _know_ you. Just like you know me.”

 

Kyril hums, lips pressed against her temple. His hands caress the length of her spine, through her t-shirt. It provokes a shiver in her, and her nipples pebble against her cotton shirt. Rey recognizes the exact moment Kyril feels it, tightly pressed as her breasts are against him — his nostrils flare, his eyes darken _._

 

 _My bull_ , she revels, heart pounding when _she_ feels his stiffening cock against her. _My man._

 

_My Kyril, my Veniamin, my Benjamin, my Ben, my Venya, my Venyusha — mine, all mine._

 

“And we love each other— _because_ of our mistakes, not despite. Because,” she concludes.

 

He shifts his lips towards her ear, breath tickling the sensitive shell as he rumbles, “I need—to _fuck_ you. Now.”

 

“Mmm,” she agrees, turning her head to catch those lips in a sloppy kiss.

 

When they break apart, both gasping for air, he says, “I want,” then frowns. “Блядь! I _don't_ want gentle, or soft.”

 

Rey is already pulling her bottoms down — sweatpants and underwear, one foul swoop. He helps her tear her shirt over her head, and before it's even fully past her elbows, he begins walking her back to the bed.

 

“I had a bad day, Rey. Really bad. And this—I _need_ —”

 

He cups her sex, a gentle pressure that grows more intense when he slides his sturdy pointer finger inside. It's an easy enough broach; she's completely soaked, just from touching him, looking at him, glorying in the way he looks at her.

 

“I know,” she wheezes. “I know what you need.”

 

“Get on the bed—on your hands and knees for me.”

 

“Ask me nicely,” she chides him, her voice tart, puckering her lips up at him. He leans in for a brief kiss, but pulls away before she can really sink into his embrace again.

 

 _“Please,”_ he says, through clenched teeth. “ _Please_ get on the fucking bed.  _Please_ don't make me ask again. _Please_ let me fuck you into the mattress.”

 

If she wasn't wet before, she sure as hell is now, hearing the raw _desire_ in his voice. So she backs away until her legs hit the bed, never tearing her gaze from his, then spins and climbs up, on her hands and knees just like he said, baring her soaked folds to him when she spreads her thighs wide.

 

 _Yes_ , she thinks. _Yes, yes, yes._

 

Kyril climbs over her, caging her in, and slips two fingers inside this time.

 

“Can you take me, милая девушка? Are you ready?” he asks, his lips on her jaw.

 

“ _Please_ , baby,” she cries. “ _I_ need this too.”

 

“Fuck,” he hisses, giving his fingers a rough twist.

 

When his heavy bulk at her back disappears, she bends her neck and catches him pumping his monstrous cock in his fist. He's leaking already, opalescent precome dripping onto the mattress, and each pump reveals the deeply flushed head.

 

 _Mine_. _That's all for me._

 

His eyes drift down to her cunt, and she catches him licking his lips — hopefully enjoying the same sentiment.

 

And then he's on her again, the tip of his cock kissing her slick entrance, pushing in, splitting her wide, forcing her throbbing cunt to accommodate. There's nothing gentle about the way he hilts himself inside her, one hard life-changing thrust and his balls are resting against her swollen flesh, she's so full she can't even keep her eyes open —

 

“I need—” he pants, hot breath on her neck sending another shiver through her body.

 

His fingers on her clitoris, eliciting from her what she could not produce earlier.

 

“—you—”

 

He pulls his hips back, the thick heavy weight of him inside, all around, everywhere — still so immense to her, even after they've done this every day — _two or three times a day_ — for months.

 

“—to just—”

 

He slams home, she thinks he might be hitting her cervix — she's not sure how these things work but he's making nerve endings sing so deep inside of her — places she never even knew _existed_ before she met him.

 

“—take it,” he grinds out, swiveling his hips, pulsing, jackhammering inside her.

 

It's thrilling, all that muscle behind every powerful thrust, Kyril pummeling her cunt, his head hanging over her shoulder, and Rey —

 

Rey fucking loves it. She pushes back at him, jolting each time their bodies meet, and moans happily when he lifts his other hand off the mattress, banding his arm around her ribcage.

 

“Don't,” he warns. “Just take it. Take it, Rey. Fucking—”

 

“It's okay,” she gasps, winded, exhilarated, between thrusts. “It's okay. Give me—all of it—ha—harder—”

 

He bellows, and drives into her so forcefully they both slide across the mattress. In all of their month or so together, Kyril has never, ever fucked her like this. Everything in her body is singing out a hallelujah chorus — from the tips of her tingling fingers to her curled toes, to her soaked and throbbing and stuffed cunt in-between.

 

“My—your hand—on my—my throat,” she pleads. “Please, Venya, please.”

 

He pauses at that, for half a second. “Are you sure? Your scar—”

 

“ _Please_!”

 

“My sweet little wolf,” he groans, releasing her waist. He resumes his fucking, brutal thrust after thrust. She can feel each one in her sternum when his hips collide with her ass, when he rocks her entire body forward.

 

“I've got you, beloved.”

 

And then —

 

Kyril's hand on her throat, a firm cuff around her windpipe, not cutting off anything but just applying a firm, solid pressure. His cock inside, driving deep, hard, fast. His chest at her back, both of them sweaty hot messes. A sensation of melting, becoming a molten creature birthed from the Earth's primordial fires like she was always meant to be, ready to resume her natural state as soon as his thick cock plunging her depths and thick fingers kneading her sensitive bud set her free —

 

“Set me free,” she babbles, a needy nonsensical whine. “Kyril, Venya, baby, _baby_ —”

 

Her man, her Kyril, giving her everything, trusting her to handle it —

 

All she wants for is a kind word, something sweet to tumble from her love's lips so she can let go, come undone, give in, let this hot magma wave crest and fall back.

 

Before she even has to ask, his lips have returned to her ear.

 

“This pussy? Perfect. Made for me. I'm gonna come now, milaya—but you need to be a good girl and come first. Be good for me.”

 

“Ah!” It's a quick needy whimper, forced out of her, big hands steering her by the throat and clitoris, _so good_ , _how is it so good_ , and then —

 

— _there it is, there it is, there it is—_

 

Rey was going, now she's gone. Everything in her body that can tremble, quake, shiver — it does. She's lost to the wet sounds and the musky smell and the intense feel of them, together — timeless, ephemeral, elemental, divine.

 

“Good girl,” he grunts — then he pushes himself in deep, one final hard thrust, and comes inside her with a gravelly moan.

 

. . .

 

When he collapses onto the mattress, groaning, satisfied, sprawled out — Rey lowers herself onto him, her legs between his and her hip bones digging into his abdomen.

 

“Oof,” he puffs out, encircling her tiny waist with his arms.

 

Their bodies are still sticky, heated — but he likes feeling her slender weight on top of him, likes the way she folds her arms over his chest to rest her chin on the back of her hands.

 

He can't begin to explain to her how much he loves her in this moment, how her acceptance of his rougher tendencies has helped build him back up again after Diomedes’ lawyer tore him down.

 

“You don't have to be angry or upset to fuck me like that, y'know,” she says, stretching up to brush a kiss against the underside of his jaw.

 

“You don't—deserve that,” he coughs out, frowning down at her.

 

“Look at me, do I look upset?”

 

She doesn't. Face dewy and bright with perspiration, still a little breathless, still making little high-pitched sighs of contentment — she looks like the cat that caught the canary.

 

“You—liked that? You want me to just fuck you hard and fast?”

 

“Not every time, but—yeah, sometimes I do. I’m not a porcelain doll.”

 

“Okay.” He exhales a shaky breath, once more rearranging the pieces of the mosaic of Rey to make room for this new information. If her first murder was an obsidian shard, dark and sleek and dangerous — this piece is a ruby, lurid and red and glinting with sensuality.

 

_She wants to be taken hard by her man sometimes. I can do that. I would love nothing more than to do that. I would have killed a thousand Snokes for the right to do that._

 

Laying her head down on his chest again, she releases a protracted, wide-mouthed yawn.

 

“Okay,” he repeats, petting her silky brown hair, “Whatever you want, Irenush.”

 

. . .

 

The phone rings five times before someone picks up.

 

“Здравствуйте.”

 

Her voice is as much a whisky-burned rasp as the last time they spoke, and she sounds tired.

 

“Mamushka? It’s me, Veniamin,” he says, and then, bursting to tell her the good news: “It—it worked.”

 

“Ben,” she gasps. For a moment there is a heavy pause while his mother processes his words, and then she crows, “Of _course_ it did! I told you it would, didn’t I?”

 

“You did.” There is another lull, neither hostile nor fraught, but reflective, filled with all the things that — at least, for Kyril — he desperately wants to say.

 

“I love you,” he settles on, hoping against hope she will not hang up — hoping she will say it again, what she said before — hoping she will tell him that _he_ is loved. And then, belatedly, but with no less import: “Thank you.”

 

She chuckles. “I know, kiddo. I—I love you too. And—you can repay me with grandchildren.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Translations:
> 
> "Возлюбленная." _[Vozlyublennaya.]_  
>  **Beloved.**
> 
> "Привет." _[Privyet.]_  
>  **Hi.**
> 
> "мой волчонок" _[moi volchonok]_  
>  **my little wolf**
> 
> "О Боже" _[O Bože]_  
>  **Oh, God!**
> 
> "Блядь" _[Blyad']_  
>  **Fuck**
> 
> "Енот?" _[yenot?]_  
>  **Raccoon?**
> 
> "милая девушка" _[milaya devushka]_  
>  **sweet girl**
> 
> "Здравствуйте." _[Zdravstvuyte.]_  
>  **Hello.**
> 
> Name meanings!  
> So...I'm a bit of a dweeb. When I was thinking up an AU name for [Chewbacca](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Chewbacca) (even though I was just gonna call him 'Chewie'), did I give him any old name?
> 
> I did not! I found some random ass [chart](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y3HfN.png) that explains the meaning of the Shyriiwook name, and then I found a first name, [Grady](https://www.behindthename.com/name/grady), and a surname, [Bellamy](https://surnames.behindthename.com/name/bellamy), that corresponds to those meanings. :|
> 
> Anyway, the others are mostly from the SW universe! FBI Assistant Director [Amilyn Holdo](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Amilyn_Holdo), who I forgot to link to last chapter. Deputy Marshal [Kenobi](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Obi-Wan_Kenobi/Legends). US Attorney [Mace Windermere](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mace_Windu). The Honorable Judge [Jinn](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Qui-Gon_Jinn).
> 
> Some links? Some links.  
> What is [Russian Caravan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Caravan) tea?
> 
> [TOUCH ME AND YOUR FIRST _[INSERT MARTIAL ARTS HERE]_ LESSON IS FREE](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_18?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=touch+me+and+your+first+karate+lesson+is+free&sprefix=touch+me+and+your+%2Caps%2C188&crid=3PJGBLK6HTOLC) swag!
> 
> Here are all the things Kyril thought about while trying not to come: [Joseph Stalin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin), the [Soviet Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union), the [October Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution), the [February Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_Revolution), the [Bolsheviks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsheviks), [Vladimir Lenin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin), [Friedrich Engels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Engels), [Karl Marx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx), and [Tsar Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia).
> 
> What [soup](https://www.campbells.com/campbell-soup/condensed/chicken-noodle-soup/) are they eating? Campbell's, of course!
> 
> What is [_The Master and Margarita_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita) and should I read it? [Yes.]
> 
> Where is [Stamford, Connecticut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford,_Connecticut)?
> 
> Who are/what is the [US Marshals Service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marshals_Service)?
> 
> What does a [US Attorney](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_for_the_Eastern_District_of_New_York) do?
> 
> How does a [federal criminal court case](https://www.fbi.gov/resources/victim-services/a-brief-description-of-the-federal-criminal-justice-process) work?
> 
> What was [The Oprah Winfrey Show](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oprah_Winfrey_Show)? [LMAO!]
> 
> More about the [Emanuel Celler Courthouse](http://www.alliedcms.com/Public_Buildings_%26_Courthouses/Pages/Emanuel_Celler_U.S._Courthouse.html).
> 
> What is a [Lincoln Continental](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Continental#Seventh_generation_\(1982%E2%80%9387\)) and [why was that the car being driven](http://www.nationalcrimesyndicate.com/top-5-mobster-rides/) by the Russian mobster?
> 
> Who is [Lloyd Dobler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say_Anything...)?
> 
> Okay, that's all from me. Thanks for reading!


	11. место, где живет надежда

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the place where hope resides

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you if you've read, if you've reblogged or liked or subscribed or left kudos and especially thank you if you've left some love in the comments. I appreciate all of it, so so much. That cannot be said enough! I have met so many amazing people through this fic, and the reylo community in general. It's just — made me really glad I gave this a shot, and really glad you all gave ME a shot. ❤
> 
> As always [and forever] I am indebted to the Herculean efforts of my lovely beta-reader, [Kachenka](https://luminousreylo.tumblr.com), who is just the best at corralling my rampant overuse of names and commas. ❤️
> 
> Some _stunning_ art: [Selina](https://selunchen.tumblr.com) has done a beautiful rendition of the steamy fire escape scene, which you can peep [here](https://voicedimplosives.tumblr.com/post/175991191899/you-guys-just-look-at-this-beautiful-piece-of). She is truly a genius, and this is her first NSFW piece so welcome to the world of smut, friend!
> 
> And [riaria](https://riaria84.tumblr.com) has commissioned [this](https://riaria84.tumblr.com/post/175682894210/i-am-beyond-obsessed-with-voicedimplosives-work) incredible piece from the mega-talented [boomdafunk](https://boomdafunk.tumblr.com)! 
> 
> I love these both SO MUCH you guys, thank you!! ❤️
> 
> Okay, that's enough from me. Anyone care for some happy-ever-after fluff?

The night before they leave Stamford — financial matters settled, new identification documents ready, living arrangements prepared — Kyril and Rey sit at the table in the studio apartment for the last time, sharing a beer.

 

“I think I'll miss this place,” she says, eying the blank walls.

 

Some kind of funky rock song is playing on the radio, and she sways her torso to the rhythm, humming along when the man sings: “ _Don't let me hear you say life is taking you nowhere…”_

 

Kyril snorts. “I wouldn't mind a little more shower space.”

 

“Thought you liked being cooped up in there with me.”

 

“I do,” he admits, then tries to infuse his gaze with suggestion, “but _imagine_ if we had a bathtub.”

 

Her eyes go wide. “Ooh, can we? Can we have a bath tub someday?”

 

“Yes, beloved.” She beams at that.

 

“Hey speaking of the bathroom...” Rey mutters, then rises from chair and crosses the room. She grabs a shopping bag from its resting place beside the dresser, and heads for the tiny room; pausing at the doorway, she leans back and asks, “You still have your Adidas tracksuit, right?”

 

“Of course,” Kyril sniffs.

 

“Put it on,” she directs, with a coy smile, and disappears behind the bathroom door.

 

Kyril is left sitting at the table, the bottle of Budweiser's condensation making his fingertips damp. He shrugs, figures it hasn't hurt to play along in the past, whenever she's gotten that mischievous glint in her eyes and that wild, playful smile — so he rifles through the dresser drawers until he sees the bright red polyester and white stripes, then strips, pulling on the pants and matching jacket.

 

“ _In walked luck and you looked in time_ …” sings the man, in a deep voice that seems to slide up the scale, into a falsetto, with ease.

 

Almost as if on cue, the bathroom door opens and Rey appears, hand on hip, giving him a come-hither crook of her fingers.

 

And she's wearing — God, she's decked out in an all-red Adidas tracksuit, a jacket and pants with white stripes running down the side, just like his.

 

_My other half, my little wolf —_

 

They match.

 

“Uh,” he coughs, unable to make any other response because something is rattling around his chest, something is pulling his lips back. Laughter.

 

He is laughing like a madman.

 

“How do I look?” Rey asks, still beckoning. She's dancing along with the music, twisting her lean hips to the chanting, repetitive chorus of “ _ooh_ ” and “ _golden years_.”

 

 _Mine. You look like you're mine_. “Cute,” he wheezes, through his laughter.

 

“Just… cute?”

 

“Come here,” he directs, opening his arms to her. She dances her way into his arms, twisting so she can pull his arms around her waist, her cute little popka nestled tight against his groin. She sways — what choice does he have? What more could he want?

 

He sways with her.

 

“My beautiful gopnitsa,” he sighs in her ear, which earns him a demure, pleased smile from Rey.

 

_“I'll stick with you baby for a thousand years…”_

 

For a moment they do this strange half-dance to the music, until Kyril grabs one of her small hands and spins her out, their arms extended, Rey trusting him to hold tight as she leans away from him.

 

“Hey! You can _dance_?” she squeaks, part query and part accusation.

 

“Hmm,” is all he says, spinning her back into his arms.

 

_“Nothing's gonna touch you in these golden years…”_

 

“I like this song,” Kyril declares. “This is _our_ song.”

 

“Mhm, I love Bowie,” she sighs, head falling back onto his shoulder.

 

As the melody winds down, Kyril notices the sky outside their two windows. Their apartment is located on the edge of Stamford, and the March sunset — later and later each day, he notes — has painted the sky with rouge. Hues of deep carmine red, tangerine, apricot, and glowing amber are all woven together to set the city skyline into deep contrast; the buildings are dark angular shadows, featureless against the flaming horizon.

 

“Wow,” Rey murmurs, clearly noticing at the same time as him.

 

“Come on.”

 

He leads her by the hand towards the window, which he lifts up with one jerk of his wrist.

 

“Wait! D’you think—are we allowed?” She's worrying her bottom lip, a nervous tell, and Kyril leans down to kiss it.

 

“Nothing’s gonna touch us in these golden years,” he quips, hushed. “Come on, milaya—it's a nice night.”

 

He's not just saying that, either. The weather has grown mild, unusually so — Kanata has informed him — for Connecticut at this time of year. They've had days of rain but tonight the air is clear; the skies are parting, even if the world remains damp from the deluge.

 

He climbs out onto the fire escape and extends his hand. Rey takes it, he helps her over the sill and through the frame.

 

“God, you're right—it's beautiful out, like Spring,” she whispers, and Kyril is almost too overcome to say anything. He nods — Rey grabs hold of the steel railing and pouts back at him until he cozies up, once more at her back.

 

“You're always so warm.” She melts against him, soft and sweet and smelling like Rey, a subtle perfume threaded through the strong scent of ozone all around them.

 

Kyril's body reacts, blood headed south — he can't help it. Classic rock is still wafting out the window, Rey is happy, wearing her Adidas tracksuit, with him —

 

With _him_.

 

He slides one hand up under her top, over the satiny skin of her abdomen, past her ribcage — less visible now, thankfully — to the luscious swell of her breast.

 

Palming it — _how perfectly you fit in my hands_ — he grinds his hardening cock into her ass.

 

_Will you tell me to stop, Irenushka? Tell me this is wrong—that the deputy marshals are watching from their van on the street, that anyone could see. Tell me to stop._

 

She doesn't. “More,” she whispers, tightening her grip on the wet railing as she pushes back against him.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“God, yes.”

 

He sneaks his other hand under the elastic waistband of her pants, under her cotton panties, down past her mound, brushing his fingers over her sex.

 

“This?” he inquires, a crooning whisper. “You like this, мои волчонок?”

 

“ _Ahh_ ,” she keens.

 

He rubs her until her essence has rendered his fingers slippery, until her folds are slick and succulent and hot as the fiery sky, content to get her off just like this, but when she whimpers, “More, Venya, _more_ —”

 

He unhands her breasts, and reaches for his own waistband.

 

“You sure?”

 

“I don't care, I hope everyone sees, I _want_ them to see, just do it Venya—fuck me right here.”

 

Oh, the wild possessive thrill that rises up inside him, at the idea of fucking her for all to see, hearing her lovely little chirps and whimpers released into the chill evening air —

 

“Your humble servant,” he grunts, gently bending her over the rail. He slides her pants down to her knees, exposing her sweet peach of a behind, and nudges the tip of his leaking cock against her cleft.

 

“Do it—ahh, uh, just— _do it_.”

 

“What if I took you here?” He brushes a thumb over the tightly furled orifice behind her pussy. “Can I have this, too, milaya?”

 

She darts a nervous glance back at him, too nervous, he can't have that, so he adds, “Not now. But someday. We'll get you nice and warmed up, and I'll ease inside, my hand and yours making you come—”

 

He continues sliding his shaft along her folds as he speaks, dousing himself with her.

 

“Maybe,” she huffs. “We—we’ll talk about it. Later. Stop teasing me—”

 

“Okay, okay,” he soothes, lining up and working himself in. “ _Here_.”

 

And then there's that exquisite slide of her flesh on his, tight pulses driving him deeper and deeper, Rey wailing into the rapidly darkening night. He moans, content.

 

“There we go,” he says, his pelvis against her bottom, her soft pussy working him as Rey clenches again and again, adjusting.

 

They move together, more swaying — the sex is subtle, both of them attempting not to be _too_ loud or move against each other _too_ frantically —

 

When Rey sinks to her knees, he follows her down. She keeps her white-knuckle grip on the railing, now above her head, and nestles back into him, almost in his lap. Her returns his free hand to her perfect siski, giving her tight nipples a light pinch, and begins to concentrate his lackadaisical kneading of her clitoris into quick, firm circular strokes.

 

Her eyes have slipped closed, he can just glimpse her face — mouth hanging open, emitting kittenish little whimpers. He thrusts up, and her whole body bounces in his lap.

 

“ _Venya_!”

 

“I love you,” he mutters, and because they are outside, because he is giving his girl exactly what she needs in front of God and everyone, he feels no compunction about craning his neck and sucking a dark bruise into the tender skin beneath her jaw.

 

“Do you love me, Rey? Be a good girl, and tell me what you're feeling.”

 

“I love you I love you I love you, it's good so _good_ I'm gonna, I haveta—”

 

Her cunt grips him, hard, clutching his throbbing cock as she throws her head back and comes with abandon.

 

“I love you too.” With that, he latches onto her neck again, drawing the blood to the skin with a hard pull of his tongue, tasting salt and soap and Rey as he drives up into her a few more times.

 

_Mine._

 

He comes just like that — a few stars breaking through the light pollution in the navy blue sky above, Rey in his lap, the smell of ozone and sex in his nose and all the promise of the future making his heart pound out a joyful staccato.

 

. . .

 

“ _What a man, what a man, what a man, whatta mighty good man_ ,” sings the female chorus on the radio.

 

Rey looks up from her dog eared copy of _Learn Russian the Fast and Easy Way_. She glances at the side-view mirror of their Ford Ranger pickup truck — behind them are Kanata and Chewie in the windowless van. Luke is driving his new car — a wood-paneled station wagon, between the two vehicles. On the highway ahead of them is Kenobi's dark SUV, leading the way.

 

Next she looks over at Kyril, driving, beside her on the truck’s leather bench seat. Rey thinks he probably doesn't realize he is wearing a faint smile. He bobs his head along absently to the catchy R&B song, both hands on the wheel.

 

“Big Salt-n-Pepa fan?” she teases.

 

“They play their videos on MTV a lot,” he says, and Rey detects a faint blush licking at the tips of his ears. “I watched them, after—I got out.”

 

She gives him a reassuring smile, and pulls one of his hands towards her, kissing his tattooed knuckles — when her lips brush against his skin, it’s like an echo of their first car ride together. _A full circle_ , she thinks. Kyril inhales sharply, eyes straying from the road for a dangerously long moment to watch her, so Rey laces their fingers and drops their entwined hands into her lap, then turns to watch the passing countryside.

 

She’s not precisely sure of their whereabouts, although she now knows that they're headed for a little town called Eureka, in northern Montana. Luke will be there too, and although they're still not exactly on speaking terms, he's made it clear that when she's ready to talk, he'll be there.

 

 _It's good that he'll be close_. Rey knows herself well enough to know her capacity for regret and forgiveness. If she thought she and Luke were never going to speak again — she knows that it would haunt her. She's grateful he’s willing to wait for her to sort through her complicated feelings — grateful that the explosive argument they had weeks ago will not be the end of their relationship.

 

They've been on the road since about eight; she's been seeing signs for Akron, Elyria, and Lake Erie for a while now. It's a gloriously clear day — a big wide overturned bowl of azure sky overhead, the sun making the last vestiges of melting snow in the passing fields glitter. She's wearing a pair of red sunglasses and her ushanka, but Kyril seems to have chosen a permanent squint to deal with the glare.

 

For a while, she just relaxes into the drive — meditating on everything and nothing as she takes in the passing farmlands, cardinal red barns and gleaming silos and rolling hills dotted with cows and all. Her feet are up on the dashboard, radio stations crackling in and out of range. They bounce between the hits of the day — Nirvana, Boyz II Men, Mariah Carey — and oldies and, when they can find it, classical.

 

“Hey, take the next exit,” she tells Kyril, when a sign for KMart appears alongside the road. He huffs his amusement, shaking his head in feigned beleaguerment, and with a flick of his blinker, does as she's asked.

 

He's been pensive today — not exactly the sullen silence he assumes when he's tired or feeling defeated, but — deep in thought, preoccupied. Rey knows he's worried about their new life — worried about being discovered, worried about fitting in.

 

Inside the KMart, she drags him through the aisles. Luke and the deputy marshals wait in their cars, refusing to participate in such frivolity.

 

“This place is insane,” Kyril breathes, spinning in a slow circle to take in the warehouse-type high ceilings, the racks upon racks of cheap clothing and shelves fully stocked with every imaginable household item. “Is this what they meant, when they talked about the American dream?”

 

“I don't think so,” Rey snorts. She places a pair of mirrored aviators on his nose. “What do you think?”

 

“ _Cool_ ,” he drawls, deadpan, affecting a comically strong Russian accent.

 

That, along with the seventies police officer vibe he's giving off in the aviators, is enough to make her chuckle.

 

He studies himself in the display mirror for a second, then turns to her. “Okay?”

 

“Better than okay,” she purrs. “You look dreamy.”

 

“Dreamy,” he repeats, with a nod. “Good. Let's buy them.”

 

She nods decisively, pivots on her heel and heads for the cash register, not turning back until she's reached it.

 

Which is how she misses him snatching up a dark felt cowboy hat, an armful of plaid flannel shirts, and a heavy, wool-lined jean jacket.

 

She shifts her head, about to ask about something — which she promptly forgets the second she lays eyes on him. The aviators, the hat resting atop his head, his sudden procurement of a wardrobe’s worth of folksy American clothes — Rey can't help it, this time she bursts into a fit of _hysterical_ giggles.

 

Kyril smiles at her — revealing slightly crooked white teeth and a charming dimple in his right cheek — eyes still hidden by the sunglasses, brow obscured by the hat's wide brim.

 

“Oh my God,” she wheezes, when she finally catches her breath.

 

“No?” he asks, smile dimming.

 

“Oh—yes, definitely yes,” she says, pulling the clothes from him and placing them on the counter to be rung up. “ _Very_ yes.”

 

Back in the car, her giggle fit having passed, she smirks at him, taking in the combined effect of his new look.

 

“Venya, I love you, but you look kind of ridiculous,” she jokes, even as she runs her hand admiringly down his thick jean-clad bicep.

 

“I thought that was the point of being American?” he volleys back, still grinning from ear to ear. He tips the brim of his hat towards her in an exaggerated, gentlemanly manner.

 

“Fair enough,” she concedes.

 

She pulls his arm around her shoulder and settles into the side of his firm body. With a kiss against her hair, he starts the car, and —

 

— they head out, on the road once more.

 

. . .

 

“Oh my God, horses!” squeals Rey, somewhere in central Minnesota. “ _Real_ horses!”

 

And there are — they're passing a sprawling paddock on the right side of the highway. The field's still a little snowy in the shaded, hilly areas, but there's green grass sprouting up as well, and it's occupied by what must be at least a dozen of the noble creatures.

 

“Mmm,” says Kyril, who spent his childhood summers sneaking candies to his neighbor’s workhorses out in dacha country. “You’ve never seen them before?”

 

“Only pulling carriages in Central Park or being ridden by police during parades,” she answers, pouting. “I grew up in New York, the most wildlife I got to experience were squirrels and rats and cockroaches. Oh, and _pigeons_. Yuck.”

 

“Can't have that.” Kyril shakes his head, decelerating the truck as he eases it over the rumble strip and brings it to a stop on the highway shoulder. Behind him, Maz and Luke do the same; a second later, up ahead — he spies Kenobi pulling over as well.

 

“You're a country girl now,” he explains, at Rey's perplexed expression. He opens his door and leaps out.

 

“What is it?” Kenobi shouts back to him, his vaguely British voice made faint by distance.

 

“Horses!” Rey hollers, already bounding down into the ditch between the road and the paddock fence.

 

Kyril shrugs at the man, who shakes his head and returns to his car, shoulders shaking with what Kyril suspects is laughter. He turns to follow Rey down and back up, close to the fence, where several palomino and red roan mares have sauntered over to investigate the newcomers.

 

“Hello, horse,” says Rey, in a reverent voice full of wonder. She holds up her hand, wiggling her fingers. “I'm Irene. I'm a country girl, now.”

 

The look she shoots back at Kyril, accompanied by a saucy wink, is so full of love and contentment and delight — he has no choice but to snake his arms around her waist and rest his chin on her shoulder, press a gentle kiss to her cheek.

 

“Here, like this.” Kyril takes her hand and flattens it, palm up, bringing it towards the mare’s velvety muzzle. The mare’s ears shift in their direction, and it snuffles for a moment, then leans closer to Rey’s palm.

 

“She likes you,” he observes. The mare continues to encourage Rey's tentative strokes with a light nickering noise, and gentle nudges of its nose against her palm.

 

“Mmm,” hums Rey, beaming, leaning back into his body.

 

And this — this is worth all the blood, all the pain, all the anguish. This is worth the annoyed looks Maz and Chewie are giving them from the van, the chagrined smile on Luke's face, the added travel time.

 

This is worth everything, to Kyril.

 

So he's in no rush, and he doesn't feel bad that the others have to wait for them. This, just this — this is for him and Rey. All he ever wanted was more of her time, more of her light in his life, and now — 

 

They've got _plenty_ of time — their whole lives.

 

. . .

 

In the back office of an old but mostly clean diner somewhere in the quaint town center of Eureka, Montana, Kyril sits across the desk from a grizzled old man who has introduced himself as Lando Calrissian. The place was built by Calrissian, he's been running it for thirty years, and this is Kyril’s third day returning to the diner, asking if they have any work for him.

 

He can’t say why he keeps coming back, exactly — he just likes the place. It’s run-down with greying walls in desperate need of a paint job, dust in all the corners, a chipped formica counter with barstools running the length of the place, a few mended tears here and there in the mustard yellow vinyl booths. Kyril likes the white and black tiled pattern that each table is covered with — it looks like an impromptu game of chess could break out at any table, at any time.

 

“Let me make sure I've got this straight, hotshot,” says Lando. “You grew up in, uh, Alaska? On a fishery? And you got no resume, no references, no credit. And no restaurant experience. _And_ you just moved here this week.”

 

Kyril swallows down his pride, which feels like it is jamming up his throat with all the excuses he could make. Instead, he nods. “Four days ago.”

 

“But you want a job as a cook,” Lando drones, clearly bemused.

 

“My, uh—” Kyril clears his throat. “My last boss told me I was a real go-getter.”

 

“That so? And what was your last job?” Lando looks like he’s enjoying this. He leans back in his desk chair, fingers laced across his well-padded stomach, waiting for Kyril’s response with the kind of expression that makes him think that whatever he says — this old man is not going to believe it.

 

He sputters out, “It—wasn’t anything official, just—”

 

“Under the table?”

 

“Yeah,” he says, shrugging.

 

“Doing?” Lando prompts.

 

Already feeling on edge from actually _begging_ for a job for _three_ days, Kyril snaps, “I just want a fresh start, okay? I’ll learn whatever I need to. I used to cook with my—when I was—with my father.”

 

“Hmm. You don’t _talk_ like an Alaskan.”

 

“My mother’s from New York,” Kyril mumbles, hating this, wanting to melt into his chair and disappear.

 

“Aha—I see.” Lando nods, looking down at his wrinkled, veiny hands. He smiles wistfully.  “You know, Benjamin Smith of Alaska, I flew in World War Two—Tuskegee Airmen, ninety-nineth Pursuit Squadron.”

 

Kyril clears his throat again, shifts uncomfortably in his chair. _How rude would it be to stand up and run out of the diner right this second? Would anyone chase me?_

 

If Lando notices Kyril’s unease, he makes no sign of it. “There was this _one_ pilot in the Red Army—never met the man himself, but he was… quite a legend. His name was Han Solo.”

 

He’s certain that he should run, right now. How far would he get? _If I grab Rey from the apartment, could we make it to Canada by sundown?_

 

“After the war ended I came back home, got married, moved out here and built this diner. Just wanted some peace and quiet, maybe some fresh air—which Eureka has in multitudes. Never forgot that name, though. I caught a couple film reels they took of him flying in some dogfight—” Lando whistles. “What a _pilot_.”

 

Could he take this old man in a fight, if it came to that? _I could put you down if I had to_ , he thinks. But Kyril doesn’t want to fight him — he just wants a job. He just wants to go home and not see Rey stifle her anxious disappointment, wants to see her aglow with pride.

 

“You’d never catch anything about him in the American press—sometimes he’d show up in the European papers, though. They’re not easy to get delivered out here, haveta have them shipped over from Chicago. But it was always worth it, when I’d find something about that old Russky, Solo. Wished I could've met him.”

 

“Really,” coughs out Kyril, feeling a little nauseous.

 

Lando arches a salt and pepper eyebrow. “Shame how he died—the press seemed to think his son did it.”

 

“O—Oh?” _Fuck_. He’s fucked. They’ve just gotten here and he’s already had his cover blown. They’re not even settled yet and they’re going to have to move, _Rey is going to try so hard to pretend she’s not upset but she will be, she’ll have every right to be, how could I be so stupid—_

 

“But you know what I think?” asks Lando, leaning forward, elbows resting on the paper-strewn desk. His eyes flick down to Kyril's tattooed hands, white-knuckled and gripping the armrests of his chair, then back up to his face.

 

“I really don’t, Mister Calrissian.”

 

“I think—if a _hero_ like that was alive today, and his son really _had_ killed him, but somehow he could watch from the afterlife as his son did something crazy, like that Veniamin Hanovich Solo when he took the stand in New York and thumbed all his comrades, well—”

 

“I’ll leave,” Kyril mutters, making to rise from the chair.

 

“Hey, come on!” Lando gestures for Kyril to sit down again. Reluctantly, he does. “Let me finish. What I was _going_ to say is: I think he’d be proud.”

 

All Kyril can manage, through the thick fog of shock, is a dull, “Oh.”

 

“ _I_ would be, if I’d had a son,” Lando concludes.

 

He shakes his head. “I—thank you. Sir. But—I doubt that.”

 

“Look,” says Lando. “We’re all just humans, floating around on this big blue marble. I'm not into judgment—never have been. You want the job, _Veniamin_?”

 

And there it is. He should stand up, walk out this diner, find Rey, and get the fuck out of this podunk town. Except — Lando’s not glaring at him, his body language is open, he’s still got that nostalgic glint in his eyes. He’s, to Kyril’s utter amazement, not threatening to call the police.

 

“Yeah, Mister Calrissian. I do,” he huffs. “I really do.”

 

“Call me Lando. And—you have to earn your keep. This old heap may not be much to look at—but it's mine. I run a tight ship.”

 

Kyil is nodding his head so eagerly it feels as though it may pop clear off his neck at any moment. “I will. I’m—my girl says I’m a great cook.”

 

“That so? Well, you should bring her around some time—let me meet this esteemed judge of the culinary arts,” Lando teases.

 

Kyril's lips twitch involuntarily, which seems to amuse Lando, who begins to laugh, grey mustache quivering. And Kyril — he doesn’t exactly know why, but he finds that he is laughing along with the old man. They sit there, chuckling at each like a bunch of idiots, until tears are streaming down Kyril’s face and Lando hands him a tissue.

 

“So,” he says, when their mirth finally fades.

 

“Yeah, you got a job, kid,” Lando says, chuckling. “Go tell your girl. Buy a cheap bottle of wine and celebrate, huh? But be here bright and early tomorrow morning—I’ll make you scrub pots, if you aren't.”

 

“I will,” Kyril swears, rising from his chair once more. “I—uh, thank—”

 

“Alright alright, get outta here.” Lando shakes his head at Kyril, standing there hunched over due to the low ceiling and tiny confines of the office, and shoos him out with a chuckle.

 

“Oh, and kid!”

 

He has one foot in the corridor that leads towards the kitchen, but he pauses and turns back to look at his new employer.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Welcome to the Millennium Diner,” Lando says, still chuckling. Kyril nods, and Lando gives him a casual salute.

 

As the office door swings closed behind him, Kyril thinks he hears the old man mutter to himself:

 

“ _Hell_ of a pilot.”

 

. . .

 

Rey has a new job.

 

It's not her dream job. Did she spend hours as a little girl fantasizing about becoming a jazzercise instructor in bumfuck, Montana? She can't say she did.

 

But then — the nice folks at the Eureka Community Center have told her that if she does well with the aerobics, she can add a couple self-defense classes in a month or so.

 

And, to be honest, Rey's childhood hopes for her future — she wanted desperately to _be_ Flash Gordon — were never really going to pan out anyway.

 

In any case — it's something, for now. And what Rey finds she cares most about as she ambles back to her and Kyril's little apartment in a subdivided house on the southern side of town, loaded down with grocery and new clothes — is that they're together, and safe.

 

All of them, even Luke, who's settled into an attic bedroom a few blocks away that's being let by a middle-aged divorcee named Mara Jade. She's glad he has somewhere to live, even though she still feels her blood pressure rise every time she thinks about all the things he chose to keep from her — she's glad there is someone keeping an eye on him, hopefully not letting him fall into complete hermit-like solitude.

 

But currently, Rey is more concerned with trying on the new Spandex leotard she's purchased from one of the town's three clothing stores. The sound of the front door opening and closing comes as she is turning this way and that in front of their cracked bedroom mirror, studying her reflection.

 

She's filled out a little, her breasts and hips a little fuller. Kyril's need for sustenance and his steady presence have helped her to calm down, helped her stomach settle; she enjoys mealtimes again. The leotard is tight but flattering, although it exposes a _lot_ of skin — she might need to purchase a pair of leggings to wear underneath, if she wants to avoid flashing a room full of jazzercising Montanans.

 

 _But it does look nice_ , she thinks. _Creates the illusion of curves._

 

Her hair, pulled back into three buns to keep it off her face, leaves her neck exposed. She's considered using concealer for the scar across her windpipe, or the one on her thigh, but she figures —

 

Fuck it.

 

Let 'em talk. If people are gossiping about anything, it's more likely the bouquet of violet hickeys underneath her left ear. She smiles coquettishly at her reflection, remembering how they got there. How Kyril's mouth felt, sucking his mark onto her tender skin — their bodies so close they felt like one heaving tangle of shaking limbs and damp, throbbing flesh.

 

“Irene?” calls Kyril, passing through the small kitchen and living room. They've agreed to using their new names with each other as much as possible so they can grow more accustomed to hearing them — especially at home, because the walls of this house are _very_ thin, and the neighbors are undoubtedly curious.

 

“In here!” she calls back.

 

He stops at the threshold of the bedroom, eyes roving over her Spandex-clad body — a bottle of cheap champagne dangling from his tattooed fingers.

 

“What do you think?” she asks, biting her lip.

 

“Боже,” he mutters, and comes close enough to run his free hand down her side, over the shiny neon blue fabric. “Very—colorful. And—tight.”

 

“I got a job, I'll be teaching aerobics,” she explains.

 

His eyes linger on her legs, where the leotard leg-holes are cut high, exposing the crease between thigh and pussy — and then her chest, where the damn thing is pushing so tight on her small breasts it's creating cleavage like Rey has never had before. Kyril takes it all in, and she watches him, his hungry expression warming her and making her feel a little dizzy, a wild flush burning up her cheeks.

 

God damnit, how does he still make her blush when he does this — this _looking_ thing? After all the sex they've had? A nervous, girlish giggle escapes her, and Rey — she _needs_ Kyril to say something.

 

“Ben?”

 

“Good, it's—really good,” he says, dazed, running the back of his tattooed fingers over the swell of her decolletage. “Congratulations. On the job. I—I found a job too. At that diner.”

 

“Yes!” She throws her arms around his neck, forcing a startled laugh out of him. He sets the champagne aside, and wraps his arms around her.

 

“We're safe,” she murmurs, face buried in the dense muscle of his shoulder. “This is going to _work_. We're gonna be okay.”

 

“I think so,” he agrees.

 

“Hey Venya,” whispers Rey, into his skin.

 

“Mmm?”

 

“Ты—мой—er, Tsar,” she says, the Russian vowels awkward on her American tongue, voice still low enough that not even someone in the living room could hear.

 

She feels his chest expand as he chuffs out a light chuckle.

 

“Did you learn that just for _me_ , milaya?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

He sets her down. “Am I your Tsar?” he asks, eyes searching hers, hands roaming over her Spandex-forged curves. “Is all of this mine? My tsardom?”

 

He sinks to his knees, mouthing at the taut fabric over her navel.

 

“Yes,” she breathes, carding her fingers through his long dark hair. He should probably get a haircut, if he's going to be working in a kitchen, but then again maybe he could just pull it back, so she could she still do this —

 

“Do I deserve you?” he wonders, stroking her legs.

 

“You do. And if you want me to be yours—”

 

He grabs her ass in his big hands, brings her closer as he falls back onto his heels.

 

“Yes, milaya. Mine.”

 

“Then I am.”

 

Such a simple word, _mine_ , but the concept, the idea, the _promise_ — warm liquid heat settles into her limbs, her chest, her cunt —

 

It is so much _more_ than just a word.

 

“I accept this offer, but—only if it's everything,” Kyril rumbles, “your body and your mind and your soul—I won't have any rebel factions in my tsardom.”

 

“No rebels, I promise.”

 

“And will you be my Tsarina?” he asks, lips quirked.

 

“Yes,” she answers, trembling, excited.

 

Kyril tugs one of her hands free from his hair, brings it down to his chest. Beneath his flannel shirt, beneath the plain white t-shirt she watched him put on underneath it this morning, beneath the tattoos and beneath the skin and the muscle — his strong heart thunders, a steady unshakable cadence.

 

“This—this is your coronation gift, Tsarina,” he hums. “It belongs to you. It beats for you. I'm trusting you to take care of it.”

 

“I will—I _will_ ,” she vows.

 

He smiles. A whisper, pressed into her womb: “Tsarina, Irenushka, my light.”

 

“Venya?” Her voice sounds small, a little timid. Rey clears her throat, and tries again. “Venya.”

 

“Mmm?”

 

She steadies herself with a deep breath, then rushes to get the words out: “I'm just a woman. Not an angel or a goddess or anything. I make mistakes. I'm not—I’m not perfect.”

 

Kyril studies her a long while. He starts down at her chipped green toenail polish, up to her knobby knees and the long scar in her thigh. Up, up past her cleft, already growing damp at this intimate perusal, up past her smooth stomach and her small breasts, squished by the leotard. He lingers on the scar at her throat for a moment, as he always does. And then — their eyes meet, his fingers stroking the ticklish skin behind her knees.

 

“Maybe, maybe not,” he allows. “You told me once that you know me. Well—I know _you_ too. Maybe you're not a goddess or an angel, but you _are_ my light, and my purpose. I didn't have—I couldn't fight for myself, until I met you. It was easier just to—let myself be swept away by Snoke's grand vision.”

 

“I know,” she chokes out, and collapses into his lap, arms twisting around his neck.

 

For a time, they sit there, rocking, Kyril sweeping reverent kisses across her cheek, one of Rey's hands still trapped between them, resting on his firm pectoral.

 

He clears his throat. “So. Can you be my light? My home and my queen—not an angel or a goddess, but a woman, my woman, finally—someone who is _mine_ alone?”

 

“I can do that,” she tells him, another solemn vow. The rapid cannonade of his heart beneath her palm matches the rising clamor of her own.

 

“And in return,” he continues, bending his neck to meet her eyes, hands on her back sliding her up his thighs until her Spandex-covered sex grinds against the fly of his jeans —

 

“Will you permit me to be your home, and your king? Can I belong to you, only you?”

 

She swallows back a joyful sob. “No one has ever _belonged_ to me before.”

 

“Let me be the first,” he begs. “Let me be yours.”

 

“Yes, you're mine, you are my man, my—everything.”

 

A meeting, her lips and his — as electric as the first time, as sweet as the hundredth time, as essential to her well-being now, she knows, as it will be the thousandth, hundredth-thousandth, millionth time. A lifetime of this, of shared breath and beating hearts and hope and belief and need and reassurance and, and, and —

 

Home. Montana is a shape on a map, a mountainous horizon, a forest full of rivers and pines and rocks, a town full of farmers and cattlemen and lumberjacks.

 

 _He_ is her place. He is her home. He is hers.

 

“We belong to each other, Venya,” she says, and he smiles, and she smiles back, and she knows in her heart that, somehow, it's all going to be okay — because it's true.

 

Because they're home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not too many translations for this nugget!  
> "Боже" _[Boxhe]_  
>  **God**
> 
> "Ты—мой—er, Tsar." _[Ty moy...]_  
>  **You are my, er, Tsar.**
> 
> Names!  
> Only two, an all-time favorite: [Uncle Wanwo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lando_Calrissian), and a little more obscure, [Mara Jade](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mara_Jade_Skywalker)!
> 
> Links!  
> Who is [David Bowie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie) and is ["Golden Years"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd2clb5T8JA) a good song? [No. It's a fucking great song.]
> 
> Who is [Salt-N-Pepa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt-N-Pepa) and is ["Whatta Man"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-WFNbMohTQ) a good song? [Again, no. It's a fucking perfect song.]
> 
> What kind of [pickup truck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ranger_\(Americas\)#Facelift_1989%E2%80%931992) are Rey and Kyril driving?
> 
> Want a copy of [_Learn Russian the Fast and Fun Way_](https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Russian-Fast-Fun-Way/dp/0764142143)?
> 
> Where is [Akron, Ohio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akron,_Ohio)? [Elyria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elyria,_Ohio)? [Lake Erie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Erie)?
> 
> Some artists getting lots of love from the radio stations in 1994: [Nirvana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_\(band\)), [Boyz II Men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyz_II_Men), [Mariah Carey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariah_Carey).
> 
> What is [KMart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kmart)? [I mean, I guess it's possible you're not aware!]
> 
> What's a [cowboy hat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_hat)? [Okay this one is just me having fun.]
> 
> What's a [roan horse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roan_\(horse\)) and a [palomino horse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palomino)?
> 
> Where is [Eureka, Montana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka,_Montana)?
> 
> What was the [Red Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army)?
> 
> Who were the [Tuskegee Airmen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Airmen), and what was the [99th Pursuit Squadron](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/99th_Flying_Training_Squadron)?
> 
> What is [Jazzercise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazzercise)?
> 
> Who is/was [Flash Gordon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Adventures_of_Flash_Gordon)?
> 
> What's a [leotard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leotard)?
> 
> Cite my visual sources for Rey's leotard, you say? [GLADLY](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Qp14Si_7ukU/hqdefault.jpg).  
> What's that? Not enough evidence of the leotard's popularity in the 1980's/1990's? OH WELL, HAVE ANOTHER.  
> 
> 
>   
>    
> 
> 
> Alright, just one tiny epilogue left for us here! Hope you've enjoyed so far, thanks for reading! ❤️ 


	12. эпилог

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They don't really believe much in God or Money anymore — they've thrown their lot in with Love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LOVE YOU ALL. All the best fairytales, in my opinion, are full of darkness and terror and the sadness that is essential to being a human being — but they also give us some sort of happy ending, some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. They remind us of the things that make the suffering worthwhile: love, home, family, belonging, purpose, meaning. I hope this ending provides that. I hope I've re-imagined _Star Wars_ in a way you've enjoyed. If I have, leave some love? Just a kudos or a comment, or come say hi on [Tumblr](https://voicedimplosives.tumblr.com).
> 
> My beta-reader, [Kate](https://luminousreylo.tumblr.com) is a champion. I mean, one time she beta'd a 23k word chapter. That says it all, I think. ❤️
> 
> This has been more fun for me than words can describe. Thank you again. ❤️

About ten miles northeast outside the town of Eureka, Montana, population one thousand five hundred, there sits a humble log cabin within the forest. It has a wide veranda, where two Adirondack chairs overlook a sprawling, tree-hemmed glen. A lazy burbling river runs by in the warmer seasons, and in the winter it freezes into a ribbon of ice that leads all the way up to Canada. To the west, the snow-capped Rockies heave themselves up into the air like a ragged primordial gate intended to keep the world at bay. All around the house, violet-green swallows and American goldfinches call out their cheerful birdsong from their homes, hidden high up in the prickly boughs of the western larches and lodgepole pines and down in the grasses by the river.

 

The cabin was built by a man who calls himself Ben, with his wife — a woman who calls herself Irene. The couple worked for three years to make their home perfect while they lived in a rented duplex apartment in town.

 

Together, they picked out the beams of Douglas fir from the lumber yard. Together, they returned time and time again to the hardware store to ask old man Yoda for construction advice. Together, they sweat and bled and hammered and sawed and lifted and carried until their arms felt ready to fall off; together they fell into bed each night promising the other this would all be worth it; together they sanded and varnished and painted and toiled, toiled, toiled — almost as if the building of the house was as important as the final product.

 

On the day the man who calls himself Ben finally carried the woman who calls herself Irene over the threshold, matching golden rings on their fingers and the bride dressed all in white, they made love in each of the four rooms in the house before they curled up together, sated and spent, on the woven rug in front of the living room's massive stone hearth.

 

These days, the man who calls himself Ben runs the Millennium Diner, located on the southern end of Eureka's main avenue. He inherited the place from old man Calrissian, who decided a few months back he's gotten too old for all this and happily signed the place over. Calrissian still has a designated booth in the front of the diner, where he holds court and takes the locals’ money in chess games and sometimes, on slow evenings, tells some of his incredible war stories.

 

The man who calls himself Ben staffs the place with troubled local youth — teaches them how to flip burgers, how to keep a cool head during the dinner rush, how to balance the books.

 

He tries to show them the satisfaction of responsibility, what it means to take pride in your work. Sometimes, if they ask very nicely, he cooks them up a big pot of his excellent rassolnik soup.

 

He never answers questions about the tattoos on his hands, or his arms, or anywhere else — nor does he ever talk about how his wife got the scar on her throat. The kids who have been working at the diner for a while have developed a sense of loyalty to the couple — they warn the newcomers not to pester them about it.

 

 _Leave it alone,_ they say. _They’re good people. We all have the right to a past that's dead and buried._

 

His wife teaches afternoon aerobics and self-defense classes in the basement of the town’s community center; she coaches a girls’ little league team in the spring. She helps out around the diner the rest of the time, and all the stray teens they seem to have collected jokingly refer to her as 'mom.’ She always smiles fondly when they do, and throws a couple extra bucks in the tip jar.

 

Oftentimes, when those teens find themselves down on their luck — thrown out of their house, maybe, or in need of a break from their challenging lives — they can be found crashing on the couple’s couch. They keep the kids safe and fed and make sure they get to school on time; they tell them it's okay to be confused and scared and uncertain.

 

 _Our door is always open_ , she tells them all.

 

 _We're here to listen if you need_ , he adds. _No judgement_.

 

They have visitors, the man who calls himself Ben and the woman who calls herself Irene. Every summer, a young couple from New York roll in on the train that stops down at Whitefish. They drive down to pick them up in the station wagon of Ben’s uncle, the older man who calls himself Luke, the one who stops in at the diner to say hello sometimes. They’re very nice men, the visitors, everyone says so: handsome, and chatty, and they always bring fancy gifts all the way from the Big Apple. They spend a week, make the couple come into town to go line-dancing at the local bar, and stay out late watching movies at the drive-in. It’s always a little wistful, the day they must return to Whitefish and get on the train headed back east.

 

Two years ago, a beautiful, grey-haired woman with the bearing of a world-weary queen showed up. Everyone gossiped about her for months after — how was she related to the couple? Or to the older man who calls himself Luke? Most people supposed she was a mother, or an aunt, to the man who calls himself Ben. She stayed with the man who calls himself Luke and his girlfriend, Mara. She didn't speak much to the locals, but they overheard a few snippets of the group's conversation — she had a raspy, scotch-singed voice, which she used to snap out witty one-liners and sarcastic barbs as easily as she did sage, time-tested advice. She spent most of her visit at the diner, in the kitchen with the man who calls himself Ben, and when she left, the two shared a long, lachrymose hug.

 

The years flow on, lazy and sated as that wide burbling river. In the winter, when the snow falls so thick they are housebound for days, the couple trains together, mostly Krav Maga. Inevitably, they grow sweaty and excited as they throw and catch punches, kicks, kisses. And it always ends the same: the man who calls himself Ben so deep inside of the woman who calls herself Irene that she whimpers for him, her lean body gone sticky and sweet and molten like hot melted sugar — just for him, just how he likes it.

 

“Irenushka,” he sighs, in those heady moments after she sinks down onto him, after he pins her to the floor and thrusts into her. “Beloved. My light. My life.”

 

“Venya, Venya, Venya,” she chants — a benediction and a prayer.

 

“Tell me,” he always ends up pleading. “Tell me again.”

 

And she smiles, and traces the jagged scar that cleaves his face with her thin, calloused fingers.

 

“I love you,” she says, “I could never fear you, I belong with you. I belong  _to_ you, and you to  _me_. We're home now. We're safe.”

 

In the summer, when the air gets so heavy with humidity that the woman's head pounds like a battle drum and the wind carries the promise of wild storms — she pads out onto her patio in her bare feet. The wood is stripped, and sanded, and varnished, thanks to her husband. She watches the dark clouds roll in over the pines and pile up above her home, breathes in the scent of petrichor as fat drops of rain begin to fall, and counts each of her blessings.

 

Eventually, her husband's thick arms wind themselves around her waist, his muscled torso plastered to her back and molded around her like a suit of armor. The man who is Ben, who was Kyril, who has not been Veniamin in a very long time, but who has also _always_ been all three — he lowers his mouth to the skin that stretches thin over the column of her neck. He rests his lips at the edge of the scar there, his nose tucked under her chin, just breathing her in. They sway together, a subtle rocking movement. His bare feet bracket hers — nearly twice the size — and her body is subsumed by his solid, unyielding mass.

 

And the woman who is Irene, who was Rey, who has never really felt like she was an Irena except for _this_ man, and yet who knows in her bones that she is all three, she thinks:

 

_We got lucky._

 

She says as much, every time, and the man hums his agreement into her skin.

 

They've built a quiet life, here on the fringes of the world. Quiet, boring perhaps, but it's theirs. There is no more blood, or secrets, or loneliness, or waiting.

 

Sometimes he goes sullen, and brooding, and distant. And she worries, or gets angry with him, feeling locked out of her own marriage. Sometimes she has bouts of untempered rage, so she wanders off into the woods to hack at the trees with an ax and mourn for all of the things that life has taken from her. But like the summer storms, these difficult moments pass. They always come back to each other, jubilant and shaking with the need to be close after denying themselves, even for just a few hours.

 

They don't really believe much in God or Money anymore — they've thrown their lot in with Love.

 

And they have hope. The woman who calls herself Irene has recently stopped taking the tiny pills that prevent pregnancy. The man who calls himself Ben drives her home in their used pick-up truck each evening, chases her into the bedroom, fucks her any way that she wants him to. Fucks her in ways she didn't even _know_ she wanted, until she met him. Makes her feel delicate and strong — holy and human. Makes her come, just for him, again and again and again, then lets himself come, buried in her as deep as she can take him, rambling about how good she is for him and how right this feels.

 

And after, she places whisper-quiet kisses on the onion domes of his tattooed church, on the skulls and stars, on the rose above his nipple, on the crosses at his knuckles. She traces the lines of Cyrillic that span his corded forearms with her lips, and when she gets to the tattoos he did not choose, the ones that were carved spitefully into his skin while he was held still, screaming her name and foaming at the mouth with despair, the woman who will always be _his_ Irenushka looks up at him through her eyelashes.

 

“You are so _good_ ,” she tells him. “They tried to take that from you, but they _couldn't_. You are so good to me, so good _for_ me. A good lover and a good man and you're going to be _such_ a good father.”

 

At that, he weeps. She holds him to her breast, he clings to her, and she lets herself weep too. Because they can, because they know it is safe for them to do so.

 

So they worship each _other_ , and their life is filled with soft words and good food and serene nights spent reading or looking at the stars or her legs wrapped around his waist as he drives his cock home or his mouth on her cunt as they entwine themselves tighter and tighter in the big wooden bed that Ben has built for them with his bare hands.

 

They have given their belief to Love, they have paid the heavy toll demanded of them by Hope.

 

And in return, Irene and Ben have been afforded Peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last round!
> 
> One name meaning, [Old Man Yoda](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Yoda). ;D
> 
> Links!  
> What's an [Adirondack chair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adirondack_chair)?
> 
> What are the [Rockies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountains)? As far as I can tell on the map, I think the [Salish Mountains](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salish_Mountains) would be the closest part of the range, for Eureka.
> 
> What's a [violet-green swallow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet-green_swallow)?
> 
> What's a [goldfinch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_goldfinch)?
> 
> What's a [western larch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larix_occidentalis)?
> 
> What's a [lodgepole pine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinus_contorta)?
> 
> What's the best species of [wood](https://www.artisanloghomes.com/log-homes-101/what-are-the-best-logs-for-building-my-log-home/) for building a log cabin?
> 
> Where is [Whitefish, Montana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitefish,_Montana)?
> 
> And finally, I found this on Tumblr. It's not in Montana, but [this is the home](https://cabinporn.com/post/165865243395/submitted-by-sandri-rutten-we-bought-this-lovely) I envision for my beloved Kyril/Veniamin and Irena!
> 
> Are you interested in another adventure with Irena and Venya? [destinies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinies/pseuds/destinies), author of the wonderful [_Tactical Surrender_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13183992/chapters/30156201), and I have teamed up for a crossover between our two stories. It's called [_The Commander and the Cook_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15686037/chapters/36446091) and it follows a Freaky Friday-esque body swap between canon-verse Kylo and our Venya! 
> 
> That's all I've got. Thank you [thank you thank you] for coming along with me on this adventure! ❤️


End file.
